CARACAS, Wednesday September 10, 2008 | Update
Politics
The government of the United States distanced itself from
the trial in Miami in which a federal prosecutor confirmed
that the USD 800,000 seized in 2007 from a Venezuelan-American
businessman was a campaign contribution from the Venezuelan
government to Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, who was
then running for president of Argentina.
In a statement published on Wednesday by the Buenos Aires'
newspapers Clarín and La Nación and reported by
EFE, the Embassy of the United States said that the trial
that began on Tuesday against Venezuelan businessman Franklin
Durán, accused of acting as a covert Venezuelan agent
in the US, "was not an investigation directed towards Argentine
officials."
The government of Fernández de Kirchner has not made
any comment so far on a case that has made the headlines of
the Argentine newspapers and was a source of a diplomatic
conflict with the United States earlier this year, when the
federal prosecutor in Miami implicated for the first time
the Argentine president, as reported by EFE.
05:09 PM. Economy. If any country has cashed in on the Bolivarian revolution, that is Brazil, particularly the private companies of the southern neighbor. Over the past five years, it has been awarded contracts for works to be carried out in Venezuela for over USD 14 billion. This puts it as the first recipient of government-to-government contracts, that is, without bidding, since Hugo Chávez took office.