There were additional USD 4.2 million in Antonini's aircraft

The aircraft was chartered by Argentina's oil company Enarsa(Handout photo)

Politics The USD 800,000 carried by Guido Alejandro Antonini Wilson and seized on August 4, 2007, at Jorge Newbery Airport in Buenos Aires, were a fraction of the money aboard an aircraft chartered by Argentinean state oil company Enarsa.

According to Argentinean newspaper La Nación, there were additional USD 4.2 million on board the chartered aircraft from Venezuela. The newspaper claims to have gotten the information from two independent sources, one of them from Caracas, Venezuela, which "have a leading role in the case filed in a federal court in Miami."

Sources assume that, like the USD 800,000 seized on August 2007, the USD 4.2 million were also earmarked to finance the presidential campaign that led to the election of Cristina Fernández de Kichner as President of Argentina.

The newspaper reported on Sunday that "the first person concerned by the fate of the money was Diego Uzcátegui, then president of the subsidiary of Venezuelan state oil company Petróleos de Venezuela (Pdvsa) in Argentina and Uruguay. According to the sources, Uzcátegui would have asked his interlocutors when he arrived in Buenos Aires, a few hours after the seizure: "What about the USD 4.2 million? Where is the money?"

"Several witnesses listened to what Uzcátegui said. But the question was directed at two of the passengers of that flight: his son, Daniel, and Guido Alejandro Antonini Wilson, the man who said that the money belonged to him, according to the airport's records. However, since then, Antonini has denied in the United States that he was the owner of the money."

The newspaper added that somewhere in the audio transcripts taped by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) officials, with the cooperation of Antonini, the word "suitcases" is mentioned in plural.

The suitcase trial is being heard in a Miami court against four alleged Venezuelan covert agents in the United States who were supposedly trying to silence Antonini in order to hide the source and destination of USD 800,000 Antonini tried to smuggle into Argentina.

Assistant US Attorney Thomas J. Mulvihill had already mentioned during an early hearing that "additional funds" would have left from Venezuela for the presidential campaign of Fernández de Kirchner. At that time, the prosecutor did not clarify whether those funds came in that flight or earlier.

The latest reports published by the Argentinean press concerning the suitcase scandal have provoked a reaction of Argentina's opposition which has demanded further investigations into the case.

Translated by Gerardo Cárdenas