CARACAS, Monday September 15, 2008 | Update
Politics
The star witness of the US Federal Attorney General in the
case of the suitcase scandal, Guido Alejandro Antonini Wilson,
will take the stand this week to give evidence in a trial
against Venezuelan businessman Franklin Durán.
Durán has been accused of acting as a foreign agent
for the Venezuelan government to cover up a political cash
scandal.
Antonini, a Venezuelan-US businessman, was carrying the well-known
suitcase stuffed with USD 800,000 coming from the Venezuela
government, presumably for the election campaign of brand-new
Argentinean President Cristina Fernández, Efe reported.
The court action against the Durán, the only one of
the five defendants who has pleaded not guilty, will start
again next Wednesday.
04:17 PM. Western Hemisphere. "Damned empire; I curse you one thousand times; some day you will be finished off and wrecked. I curse you one thousand times, empire." This is the least that President Hugo Chávez has uttered to refer to the US government. In urging the Bolivarian Armed Forces to prepare for war, he said that a US raid on Venezuela through Colombia would trigger and spread over the region "the 100-year war."