Seems that Chavez was caught trying to buy off someone elses election.
But what caught my eye was the figure - $800,000.
Must be the going rate!
The trouble started on Aug. 4 when Venezuelan-American businessman Guido Alejandro Antonini Wilson’s luggage inadvertently went through standard scanning procedures, instead of being exempt from such an examination because he was a VIP returning from Caracas on a flight chartered by Argentina’s state oil company. As a result of the scan, customs officials at Buenos Aires’ Newberry airport found a bag stuffed with $790,550 in unmarked $50 bills. The other passengers on the plane were seven Argentine and Venezuelan oil officials who had been in Caracas negotiating the bond and gas plant deals.
Opponents and critics of the Argentine first couple immediately pounced on the incident as proof that Chavez was buying the support of the Kirchner government. “This is the proof of the corruption of this government,” said Elisa Carrio, the main opposition candidate in the presidential campaign. The unseemliness of the airport discovery was not mitigated by Antonini Wilson’s immediate flight from Argentina, apparently for Key Biscayne, Florida, where he maintains an apartment. A warrant has now been issued for his arrest by an Argentine court.
Chavez denies any link to the suitcase and dismisses the whole affair as a U.S. plot. “It is an absolute falsehood that the $800,000 had anything to do with functionaries of our government,” Chavez told reporters in Buenos Aires when he visited two weeks ago, just after the affair came to light. For its part the Venezuelan state oil company — which has a branch in Argentina — denied any connection between itself and Antonini Wilson. However, news reports in Argentina and neighboring Uruguay claimed that Antonini Wilson’s hotel bills and other expenses in the Uruguayan capital of Montevideo — just across the river from Buenos Aires — had been paid for by the Venezuelan company.
