Suitcase scandal: Antonini claims that he was pressed in Argentina

 Antonini testified for the third time in Miami Politics The main defendant in the case of a presumed shipment of election funds from Venezuela to Argentina, Guido Antonini, said on Thursday in a Miami court, that when the cash was found by Customs in Buenos Aires, he was advised to say that the money belonged to him; otherwise, he would get into troubles.
 Antonini said that after the seizure of a suitcase stuffed with USD 800,000, a woman showed up in the Customs office. She promised to solve the problem and asked him to sign a record, where he should declare the cash as its own, AFP reported.
"I told her that the money was not mine. She told me: 'Shut up; I was sent here to solve this issue,'" Antonini told the jury. The woman was María Cristina Galli, a presumed official at the Buenos Aires airport. However, her position was not specified. Antonini said that an employee completed the attestation signed by him.
 The event was to be recorded as an offense. The Argentinean state would seize 50 percent of the money and the other 50 percent would be returned to its alleged owner. As promised, "I would be able to remain with these USD 400,000," said Antonini. In this way, both the Venezuelan and the Argentinean governments would be held harmless from the sending of these funds.

Venezuelan intelligence chief promised to meet Antonini's demands. The US-Venezuelan businessman wanted USD 2 million, forged documents and immunity. Politics The voice of Henry Rangel Silva, the head of the Directorate of Intelligence and Prevention Services (Disip), sounded worried on the other side of the telephone line.  He was calling from Caracas to Guido Alejandro Antonini to calm him down and to assure him that the Venezuelan government would meet the requirements of the "fat man." (Antonini is not longer that fat, as he has lost 30 kilos), in exchange for his silence. He provided a list of three demands: documents to justify the USD 800,000 seized in Buenos Aires, USD two million (that he asked on the suggestion of the FBI) and the promise to close the case in Argentina. The director of the Venezuelan intelligence services contacted Antonini at least twice, on November 6 and 18, 2007, according to the recordings presented by the Assistant US Attorney Thomas Mulvihill.  Mulvihill also submitted to the jury a letter written by the FBI and sent by Antonini to Venezuela's president Hugo Chávez through the Consul-General in Miami, José Antonio Hernández Borgo. "Dear Commander Chávez", said the greeting of the letter. Additionally, the US Federal prosecution showed a notebook with a questionnaire where the Venezuelan defendant Franklin Durán wrote by hand Antonini's answers about certain details of the suitcase scandal. Durán asked him to note down the answers and sign the paper, but Antonini refused to do it. So he decided to write it himself.  In one part of the notebook, somebody wrote USD 6 million, with the words: Transfer Venezuela-Argentina, 10 years." Antonini did not explain why such a figure had been written down in the paper, since neither the US prosecutor Mulvihill nor Duran's attorney, Edward Shohat, asked him about that. In the memorandum, there are some questions such as: What was the money for? And beside, some words handwritten by Durán: "Campaign."  To whom the money belonged? "To Pdvsa." Other lines read as follows:  "Reiter and Uberti carry the suitcases." "Two similar suitcases with the same color."  "Uberti put the first suitcase in the van that left." "Uberti promised to withdraw the suitcases."  Later, when the prosecutor played back a call with the director of the Disip, the star witness in the case insisted, "Rangel wanted me to sign the power of attorney for the lawyer in Argentina." In the first conversation, the head of the Venezuelan intelligence service identified himself as Arvelo and later he mentioned the words "the tall man," in reference to Rafael Ramírez, the president of state-run oil company Petróleos de Venezuela, Pdvsa.  "I am desperate," Antonini told him. "The receipt or the finances are not the big issue. And the tall man (Ramírez) told me that he was committed to solve the problem in the South (Argentina)," replied the Disip Director on November 6.