A conspiracy to cover up the intended recipient of a suitcase filled with $800,000 in cash found in Argentina last year reached the highest levels of Venezuela’s government, with President Hugo Chávez ordering the head of his intelligence service to handle the situation, a Venezuelan lawyer testified here Tuesday in United States District Court.
The lawyer, Moisés Maionica, said that just days after the suitcase was discovered at a Buenos Aires airport in August 2007, Gen. Henry Rangel Silva, the head of Venezuela’s intelligence service, told him that Mr. Chávez was upset about the handling of the fallout by the national oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela, and had instructed General Rangel to deal with questions surrounding Guido Alejandro Antonini Wilson, the man caught with the cash . “Because there was no solution given to the matter, General Rangel was assigned by the president himself to take over all matters regarding Mr. Antonini,” Mr. Maionica, 36, said through an interpreter.
On the first day of testimony in the trial, lawyers offered vastly different versions of the exploits of Mr. Wilson, a Venezuelan-American businessman who was stopped at the airport while trying to enter Argentina with the cash-stuffed suitcase. Mr. Wilson later began working with the F.B.I. as a cooperating witness in the case.
The trial involves efforts that prosecutors say were made to coerce Mr. Wilson to lie about the nature of the cash and for whom it was intended. They say the money was a campaign contribution from the Venezuelan government to Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, who was then running for president of Argentina and who was elected two months later.
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