Jury convicts in cash-filled suitcase case
Prosecutors say man was acting on Chávez's order
MIAMI - A federal jury convicted a wealthy Venezuelan yesterday of acting as an illegal foreign agent who came to the United States to cover up a Latin American political scandal involving a cash-stuffed suitcase smuggled into Argentina.
Jurors deliberated seven days - at one point indicating they were hopelessly deadlocked - before finding Franklin Duran, 41, guilty of foreign agent and conspiracy charges. He faces up to 15 years in prison.
Duran stared straight ahead and showed no emotion when the verdict was announced. US District Judge Joan Lenard set sentencing for Jan. 12.
Prosecutors said during the eight-week trial that Duran and other South American men came to Miami on orders of President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela to ensure the silence of a man who carried a suitcase filled with $800,000 into Argentina in 2007. The US authorities said the money was a secret political donation to the campaign of Argentina's president.
Duran attorney Ed Shohat contended his client was entrapped by the FBI and came to Miami only to help a friend and protect business interests. Shohat vowed yesterday to appeal, calling the trial "a political circus" orchestrated by the United States to embarrass Chávez and his allies.
"Franklin Duran is a pawn of the US government," Shohat said. "We're going to continue this fight."
Assistant US Attorney Thomas Mulvihill rejected that description of the case, which has been the subject of relentless media coverage across Latin America.
"This was not a political trial. We don't engage in those," Mulvihill said.
Three other South American men previously pleaded guilty to their roles in the cover-up, including Duran's business partner, Carlos Kauffmann, 36. Kauffmann testified against Duran, laying out in detail how the pair paid bribes and kickbacks to Venezuelan officials over the past decade to become wealthy from a series of corrupt business deals.
The case was an added strain on already sour relations between Venezuela and the Bush administration. Testimony indicated it was Chávez who ordered the cover-up, directing the chief of Venezuela's intelligence service, General Henry Rangel Silva, to handle it.
Chávez and President Cristina Fernandez of Argentina, who was elected in October 2007, repeatedly denounced the case as politically motivated, an allegation US officials deny. Over the weekend, Chávez announced the government would expropriate the Venoco oil business owned by Kauffmann and Duran.
Kauffman said the general chose him and Duran because of their longstanding ties to the man who carried the suitcase into an airport in the early morning hours of Aug. 4, 2007, in Buenos Aires. That man, dual US-Venezuelan citizen Guido Alejandro Antonini Wilson, had returned to the Miami area after the money was discovered.
Duran and Kauffmann did not now that Antonini had already gone to the FBI and agreed to cooperate, wearing a recording device that captured several incriminating conversations at South Florida restaurants and coffee shops.
The centerpiece of Duran's defense was that the FBI used Antonini to manipulate Duran into making incriminating statements, partly in an effort to win a high-profile conviction against a Venezuelan government deeply at odds with the Bush administration. 