Suitcase of Cash Tangles U.S. and 2 Latin Nations in Intrigue

Lynne Sladky (AP), Jan.12.- One day last August, an airport policewoman in Buenos Aires noticed something peculiar as she was monitoring a baggage scanner: the appearance of six perfect, dense rectangles inside a suitcase.

She asked the passenger, Guido Alejandro Antonini Wilson, one of eight people aboard a private plane chartered by Argentina’s national oil company that flew from Caracas, to open the case. “He became frozen and did not say a word,” the policewoman later said in a radio interview.

When he did open it, nearly $800,000 in cash spilled out. The Kirchners and Chávez

Two days after being caught with the cash, Mr. Antonini was seen in the presidential palace in Buenos Aires celebrating the signing of business deals with Venezuela, according to Victoria Bereziuk, an Argentine secretary who was at the palace and who was one of the passengers in the private plane with Mr. Antonini, according to Argentine investigators.

Mr. Antonini, a businessman with Venezuelan and American citizenship, is now at the center of a spy mystery and diplomatic imbroglio involving Argentina, Venezuela and the United States. American officials portray the episode as a rare glimpse into President Hugo Chávez’s use of oil wealth to spread his influence, saying the cash was destined for the campaign of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, Argentina’s new president.

Venezuela and Argentina describe it as an amateurish American attempt to smear their governments. Mrs. Kirchner has called the case a “garbage operation” by Americans, while Venezuela’s official news agency claimed this week that it was a plot by the Central Intelligence Agency. But American investigators, in court documents, say a concealed recording device they persuaded Mr. Antonini to wear after the cash was seized revealed that Venezuelan spies and businessmen threatened and pressured him to cover up the destination of the cash.

The United States attorney in Miami is prosecuting those men for failing to register as foreign agents. The case hinges on a charge that four Venezuelans and one Uruguayan in south Florida tried to cover up an operation gone badly awry and to prevent Mr. Antonini from going public.
Neither Mr. Antonini nor his lawyer, Theresa van Vliet, responded to numerous requests for interviews.

Thomas A. Shannon Jr., assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs, said Friday that the Argentine reaction was “regrettable and not positive,” but that the investigation had “no foreign policy purpose.” He said recent statements from Argentine officials indicated that “the Argentines understand that this is a judicial process and that it is best for everybody to allow this to play itself out.”

The case began when Mr. Antonini, 46, returned to his home in Key Biscayne, Fla. Within days, he began cooperating with American investigators, offering them insight into what they contend was an operation in which wealthy Venezuelan businessmen in south Florida plotted with officials as high up as Mr. Chávez’s spymaster and former vice president ...

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