{"id":1998,"date":"2007-12-14T02:07:30","date_gmt":"2007-12-14T02:07:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/politics\/us-accuses-venezuela-of-secret-election-funding\/1998\/"},"modified":"2007-12-14T02:07:30","modified_gmt":"2007-12-14T02:07:30","slug":"us-accuses-venezuela-of-secret-election-funding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/politics\/us-accuses-venezuela-of-secret-election-funding\/","title":{"rendered":"US accuses Venezuela of secret election funding"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><font size=\"2\" face=\"Arial\">Rory Carroll in Caracas<br \/>\n<\/font><\/strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/\"><strong><font size=\"2\" color=\"#003366\" face=\"Arial\">The Guardian<\/font><\/strong><\/a><font size=\"2\" face=\"Arial\"> <\/font><\/p>\n<p>Prosecutors in the US have accused Venezuela of secretly funding the election campaign of Argentina&#8217;s newly inaugurated president, Cristina Kirchner. The claim ignited a political row between the three countries.<\/p>\n<p>The prosecutors told a Miami court on Wednesday that a suitcase filled with nearly $800,000 (\u00a3392,000) intercepted at Buenos Aires airport was a payment from the government of President Hugo Ch\u00c3\u00a1vez. Venezuela and Argentina rejected the allegation as a politically motivated smear.<\/p>\n<p>Kirchner, thrown on the defensive on her first week in the job, said it was an example of &#8220;garbage in international politics&#8221; and that the US wanted to &#8220;subordinate&#8221; other nations. &#8220;This president may be a woman but she&#8217;s not going to allow herself to be pressured.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The row revives suspicions that Ch\u00c3\u00a1vez has used Venezuela&#8217;s oil revenues to sponsor allies to try to forge a Latin American front against the US, which he terms &#8220;the empire&#8221;. If the charges stick they will taint Venezuela and erode the credibility of Argentina&#8217;s first elected female head of state. Both governments said it was an attempt to drive a wedge between Ch\u00c3\u00a1vez and the rest of the region.<\/p>\n<p>Venezuela&#8217;s foreign minister, Nicol\u00c3\u00a1s Maduro, said it was a fabricated scandal. &#8220;It is a desperate effort by the US government using the judicial branch for a political, psychological, media war against the progressive governments of the continent.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Three Venezuelans and a Uruguayan are charged with failing to register with the US as agents of a foreign power. All were arrested on Tuesday night.<\/p>\n<p><!--Article is not commented: 0 --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Rory Carroll in Caracas The Guardian Prosecutors in the US have accused Venezuela of secretly funding the election campaign of Argentina&#8217;s newly inaugurated president, Cristina Kirchner. The claim ignited a political row between the three countries. The prosecutors told a Miami court on Wednesday that a suitcase filled with nearly $800,000 (\u00a3392,000) intercepted at Buenos [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,1616],"tags":[49],"class_list":{"0":"post-1998","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-politics","7":"category-usa-news","8":"tag-usa-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1998","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1998"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1998\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1998"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1998"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}