Feds charge former high-ranking Chavez aides with protecting drug traffickers

[Zorro]

A former Venezuelan judge and his family flew into Miami International Airport with plans for a prepaid, two-week vacation at Disney World.

But Benny Palmeri-Bacchi never made it to the Orlando theme park.

He is among three Venezuelans charged in federal drug-trafficking cases that link for the first time former high-ranking officials in the late President Hugo Chavez's administration to Colombian cartel bosses, prosecutors said Thursday. The ex-officials are accused of accepting bribes in exchange for allowing the traffickers to fly cocaine shipments from Venezuela to Mexico and the Caribbean for distribution in the United States.

On Thursday, Palmeri-Bacchi, 46, pleaded not guilty in Miami federal court to providing protection for a convicted Colombian drug trafficker who moved loads of cocaine from Venezuela to the United States.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/07/24/234357/feds-charge-former-high-ranking.html

[Marksman_91]

1. And the bigheads start falling one after the other. I'm gonna get some popcorn, dis gonna be good

There's a lot of juicy information the Feds will get out of Hugo Carvajal as well. He was a "general" who apparently was very close to Chávez and knows a lot about the drug trafficking and money laundering activities that many other high ranking officials in the Chavista hierarchy are involved in. Already the Maduro the administration is ridiculing itself by calling his arrest a crime since Carvajal is supposed to be a "diplomat", but the reality is that his credentials as the consul to Aruba were never approved by the Dutch government, and he traveled there merely as any other Venezuelan citizen, with no immunity whatsoever.

There's a rumor going around now that a lot of the high ranking Chavista officials are starting to cancel their flights to other countries. Could it be they're afraid they'll be "taken in for questioning" as well? I'm just saying, if you got nothing to hide, you shouldn't have to worry about traveling on foreign soil, right? At least soil controlled by US allies, anyway.