Businessman Pleads Guilty To Aiding Chavez
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
A businessman became the second defendant to plead guilty to conspiring to help President Chavez’s government cover up a plot to influence Argentina’s presidential election.
Carlos Kauffmann, 36, admitted February 29 in federal court in Miami that he and four men tried to silence Florida businessman Guido Alejandro Antonini Wilson. On August 4, Mr. Antonini claimed he owned a suitcase containing $800,000 in cash seized at a Buenos Aires airport. Kauffmann admitted pressuring Mr. Antonini to tell no one that the cash came from Mr. Chavez’s government and was intended for the campaign of Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner. Mr. Antonini returned to south Florida after the cash seizure and secretly recorded Kauffmann and the other men for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, prosecutors said. Kaufmann admitted joining a discussion about the plot to silence Mr. Antonini.
