• Posted on Wednesday, April 23, 2008
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Miami guilty plea in case of money for Argentina's president

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A Miami man with links to a Venezuelan spy agency pleaded guilty on Wednesday to being an illegal agent in an alleged coverup of Venezuela's $800,000 campaign donation to Argentina's current president.

Rodolfo Edgardo Wanseele Paciello, 40, admitted in federal court that helped a Venezuelan intelligence official set up a meeting in South Florida last October to organize the alleged coverup. Wanseele was among five defendants — including two wealthy oil men, a lawyer and a Venezuelan official — who participated in the plot to silence a Key Biscayne man who got caught with the money in Argentina last August.

The men was the Key Biscayne man, Guido Alejandro Antonini Wilson, to say the money belonged to him, when in fact it was a contribution from Venezuela to the campaign of Argentine President Cristina Fernandez Kirschner. The money was uncovered by customs agents in Buenos Aires.

Prosecutors in Miami stirred up a hemispheric political scandal in December when they charged the five men with working as unregistered agents of Venezuela when they set up a meeting in South Florida to plan the coverup.

Read the full story at MiamiHerald.com.

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