Maletagate

I haven't posted much on Maletagate as it is being called in Venezuela and Argentina, because I haven't been following it.

But this NY Times article popped up on Drudge, so I figured I'd check it out.

Basically, Chavez attempted to help Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner's presidential campaign with $800,000. Involved is a Venezuelan-American who got caught in Argentina with the money. He comes back to the States and looks for help from the US government to get himself out of this mess. After FBI investigation, some Venezuelans are arrested as unregistered foreign agents and are on trial. Venezuela and Argentina deny the whole thing, with Venezuela pulling out the whole CIA accusation. (Funny, considering one of the people involved is believed to be an intelligence operative from Venezuela.) Argentina wants these guys extradited back to Argentina, and Venezuela is surprisingly quiet on the subject other than to hurl false accusations.

Sounds to me like someone got their hand caught in the cookie jar.

(Where I went to school in Venezuela, we had a parking lot in between a couple of dormitories. It was in need of resurfacing, so a Venezuelan company was called in to take up the old asphalt and lay down fresh asphalt. In a local newspaper one day, an article was written how we were making a helipad for the CIA to be able to land. And yes, this was BEFORE Chavez, and even before he attempted his coup in 1992. This was in the 80's. Interestingly enough, we did have helicopters land at our school, but they ferried the President of Venezuela Carlos Andres Perez in to the Andean town where our school was. He'd come on occasion and use our soccer field to land on. He'd stay with relatives of his in town, whose son went to our school.)