Carlos
Slim, the Mexican billionaire whose $250 million cash infusion bailed the New
York Times out of a tight cash crunch last week, has long-standing business ties
with wealthy Mexican businessmen suspected of involvement in Mexico's so-called
“Cartel of the Southeast,” the drug trafficking organization (DTO)
based in Cancun which came to light two years ago with the crash on Mexico’s
Yucatan Peninsula of an American-registered (N987SA) Gulfstream jet
carrying nearly four tons of cocaine.
A long-time lieutenant of
Carlos Slim's, Fernando Chico Pardo, left Slim's employ to take over ASUR,
a publicly-traded corporation which observers accuse of moving large quantities
of cocaine through Cancun International Airport, which the company runs and
manages.
Slim's big investment
represents an encroachment into the ownership of an icon of American democracy
of a man, and a massive fortune, whose provenance have gone largely
unexamined. But on the topic of Slim's shady dealings, all eyes seem to be
curiously averted. However it seems highly doubtful the Times' ownership is
unaware of them.
The barely-concealed facts
regarding Carlos Slim’s shady connections are well-known to journalists in
Mexico. They deserve to become more well-known here in the U.S., because links
between Mexico's exploding narco-economy and current-world's-richest-man Carlos
Slim don’t end with Fernando Pardo's ASUR.
Two
of the four prominent Chavezistas charged with illegally acting on
Hugo Chavez’s behalf in the recently-concluded
Suitcase-Gate Trial in Miami were inside players in a previous Venezuelan
scandal that took place well before Chavez ever took office, the
MadCowMorningNews has learned.
The Suitcase-Gate Trial was
supposed to spotlight a criminal Venezuelan elite of Castro-loving
Chavezistas, who taunt America,
threaten war with Colombia, and give sanctuary to Hezbollah.
Instead,
testimony showed that Chavez's Venezuelan cronies are anything but wild-eyed
radicals. The vanguard of the working class drives Ferraris and lives in
McMansions in Miami, and is too busy making money, in oil, real estate, and
weapons and narcotics to wear masks over their faces, or raspberry-red berets
Neither man has
built a better mousetrap, or done anything more
clever than align themselves with a Venezuelan elite which resembles the
vanguard of the working class much less than it does a kleptocracy very much like the
one which has just looted trillions of dollars from the American economy.
At least two of the four defendants convicted of working as illegal foreign agents in Florida for Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in the Suitcase-Gate Scandal had ties to an international criminal organization which was operating successfully in Venezuela, and with seeming official impunity, long before Chavez himself came to power, The MadCowMorningNews has learned.
Both the recently-convicted Franklin Duran, and Carlos Kauffmann, who pled guilty before the trial, took part in a $7 billion bank scandal during the mid-1990's that involved insiders looting Venezuelan banks, and led more than 200 Venezuelan bankers to flee Caracas for exile in Miami.
When a U.S. jury in Miami recently convicted Venezuelan businessman Franklin Duran in the Suitcase-Gate Trial, the verdict raised more questions than it answered.
From the start, observers saw the purpose of the prosecution as being to embarrass and point a finger at corruption in the government of Venezuela's current President (and Bush Administration bete noire) Hugo Chavez.
But while Chavez's "Bolivarian revolution" was singled out by Bush Administration prosecutors, the men acting on Chavez's behalf have connections which have so far been ignored to scandals which occurred under past Venezuelan Presidents as well.
The luxury business jet carrying a suitcase filled with $800,000 in bribes whose discovery last August kicked off the Suitcase-Gate Scandal playing out in a trial in Miami had the same registration, or" N" number, as that of a plane flying for a CIA contractor in Iraq, the MadCowMorningNews has learned.
Newspaper photos taken of the Citation X top-of-the-line business jet after the ill-fated suitcase flight show 'N' number N5113S on the tail. But a Florida-based CIA air contractor called Air-Scan Inc. is assigned that tail number, according to FAA records, for a Cessna 182 flying in Iraq.
Air-Scan Inc. is an American military contractor which has—even for an American military contractor—a checkered past.
Still, there has been no mention so far during the trial of the murky provenance of the Citation jet, whose flight began what has become a growing international incident.
The CIA Drug Plane Scandal grew exponentially last week when European Union officials broke an official 40-year-long silence on the previously-taboo subject of the CIA's worldwide involvement in drug trafficking.
Last week Mexico City newspaper El Universal reported that The European Organization for the Safety of Air Navigation has begun an investigation one of the planes, the cocaine-laden Gulfstream II business jet (N987SA), for suspected use in CIA "rendition" flights in which prisoners are covertly transferred to a third country or US-run detention centers.
Neither of the federal agencies with apparent jurisdiction—the DEA and FAA—has so far offered answers about how two American-registered jets with extremely politically well-connected owners, could have wound up carrying so much Colombian coke. But then, no mainstream American journalists have bothered to ask.
Last week, two wire services, Agence France Presse and the Associated Press, reported news that readers of the investigative reporting at this website have known about for almost a year.
While happy to see the mainstream media waking up, a little "credit where credit is due" would be nice, too. We broke this news on this website eleven months ago (Oct 8, 2007). When not unsuccessfully attempting to debunk it, America's corporate media has assiduously ignored my reporting on a whole host of scoops we've broken.
Ultimately, the effort is designed to make me go away, for the same reason that stories about 9/11 "conspiracies" never mention real investigative reporting on 9/11, which, alas, appears in very few places. And, in combination with a series of nuisance libel lawsuits, it has almost succeeded.
You can make the difference in keeping the news real by putting your money where your mouth is. Please send advice, and donations, and pre-order both the book and DVD.
A sincere and heartfelt thank you to all the Mad Cow readers who have been supportive over these past years...
"The NEW American Drug Lords" is a no-holes-barred look at into the Biggest Taboo story of our time: the illegal drug trade.
The documentary pulls back the curtain on the biggest drug story of our time: the scandal which erupted when two drug planes flying tons of cocaine were busted in Mexico's Yucatan enroute from Colombia to Fort Lauderdale in Florida.
Both were American-owned. Recent owners of the first plane busted—a DC9 with 5.5 tons of cocaine—have interlocking business partnerships with recent owners of the second plane, a Gulfstream II business jet.
The Gulfstream had been previously used to fly for the CIA. The DC9 was painted like an official aircraft from the U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security.
The New American Drug Lords. Meet them. Know them.
As the political conventions dominate our consciousness, remember that a major international trafficking operation, like this one, kicks off vast amounts of fungible cash, day-by-day, month-by-month, year-by-year...
If there is an arena where the a battle is being waged for the "soul of America," as Joe Biden suggested last week... it is here.
The exclusive "Cocaine One" series of investigative reports by this reporter appearing on this website for the past two years made the news, finally... not in the U.S., but in Mexico City, where it was cited by a principal in the drug trafficking scandal in newspaper interviews to support his allegation of selective prosecution against the DEA.
Carlos Gutiérrez de Velasco is the paterfamilias of the influential Veracruz-based family which owned the Casa de Cambio Puebla currency exchange, accused of laundering enough drug money through U.S. banks to buy as many as 100 American planes for use in drug-running.
"Threats of law suits against journalists have
become the hallmark of the Bush administration
in a not too clever tactic used to silence
independent media in the U.S. -Wayne
Madsen