Venezuela Charges Four Leaders From Sumate With Conspiracy

[bemildred]

I expect we will hear more about this.

---

Sumate, which helped lead a recall campaign against President Hugo Chavez, is a non-partisan group, which aims to increase voter participation. Chavez, who survived the Aug. 15 recall, earlier said Sumate and other opposition groups received at least $316,000 from the U.S. government's National Endowment for Democracy.

Bloomberg

[On the Road]

1. I Bet There Will BE More of This

but we won't HEAR more of it.
;)

[el_gato]

2. Arrest warrants for Sumate

http://www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=22976

Arrest warrants for Sumate's Maria Corina Machado and Alejandro Plaz

Venpres: The Public Prosecutor's Office has presented formal charges before the 41st Caracas Tribunal against four directors of the SUMATE organization and requested arrest warrants to be issued against Maria Corina Machado and Alejandro Plaz.


Prosecutor Luisa Ortega Diaz has filed charges of conspiracy to destroy the republican political structure of the nation, under Article 132 of the Penal Code, against Maria Corina Machado and Alejandro Plaz before judge Pedro Santoyo. Furthermore that the Tribunal should order the arrest for Machado and Plaz, in view of the fact that an eventual prison sentence is 8-16 years.

As regards SUMATE directors Luis Enrique Palacios and Ricardo Estevez, the prosecution charges them with being accessories to the crime of conspiracy to destroy the republican political structure of the nation, under Article 132 and in accordance with Article 84 of the Penal Code. Moreover, prosecutor Luisa Ortega requested that both Estevez and Palacios should be banned from leaving the country pending trial.

[Judi Lynn]

3. Isn't it great knowing Americans' required taxes are being used

to destabilize democratically elected presidents of other countries?

It would be so much more honorable to butt out and allow other peoples, other governments to develope the governments which best serve the greater good. We have NO BUSINESS bribing them. I hope Maria Corina Machado and Alejandro Plaz will be put under the spotlight and asked to explain themselves to their countrymen and women.

Here's a look at how slyly our high-handed, yet back-stabbing operations have been conducted regarding Venezuela, under _Bush:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

NED (National Endowment for Democracy)
Targets Venezuela
by Bill Berkowitz
Z magazine, May 2004


For more than two years, Venezuelan government officials have been hurling accusations at the Bush administration charging that it was involved in the aborted April 2002 coup which overthrew, albeit for only a short time, the country's democratically elected president, Hugo Chavez. Facing the possibility of being recalled, President Chavez recently said he had evidence proving that U.S. officials "met with rebel military officers U.S. military officers acted in the coup." Chavez also pointed out that "the U.S. ambassador was at the Presidential Palace after the coup to applaud the dictator . The government of the United States must answer before the world about the deaths that occurred here in April of 2002. "

The State Department's Richard Boucher dismissed Chavez's charges, saying that the accusations were meant to "to divert attention" from the referendum process currently underway in Venezuela, Venezuelanalysis. com reported. Boucher, however, acknowledged that the Bush administration is providing "funding to groups that promote democracy and strengthen civil society in Venezuela and around the globe." Boucher claimed that the funds "are for the benefit of democracy, not to support any particular political faction. "
One of the recipients of U.S. taxpayer money is a Venezuelan company called Sumate, the organization that provided much of the logistical support for the signature collection process in the current recall campaign. Between September 2003 and September 2004, Sumate received more than $50,000 from the U. S. -based National Endowment for Democracy.

The "NED Report to the U.S. Dept. of State on Special Venezuela Funds" documents that the organization received a million dollars in April 2002 and, since June of that year, it awarded more than $800,000 to organizations working in Venezuela, according to VenezuelaFOIA.info This non-profit website, sponsored by the Venezuela Solidarity Committee/National Venezuela Solidarity Network, found that among the organizations receiving funds were the Center for International Private Enterprise, the American Center for International Labor Solidarity, the International Republican Institute, and the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs.

NED is no stranger to Venezuelan politics. According to the New York Times, the organization "funneled more than $877,000 into Venezuela opposition groups in the weeks and months before the recently aborted coup attempt." More than $150,000 went to "a Venezuelan labor union that led the opposition work stoppages and worked closely with Pedro Carmona Estanga, the businessman who led the coup."
(snip/...)

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/South_America/NED_Targets_Venezuela.html

[AP]

4. It is right that they're bringing charges against these people.

It'll make recipients of US anti-democracy funding think twice about being paid traitors.

Wes Clark is on the board of the NED, by the way.

[bemildred]

5. The specific charge, which Bloomberg neglects to elaborate on,

is conspiracy to undermine the republican nature of the government,
related to article 132 of the Constitution (IIRC). One wonders how
the prosecutors intend to prove that, as the mere taking of foreign
money for domestic political purposes, while tacky, would not seem
to fill the bill.

[AP]

6. That's against the law in the US. You can't take political donations from

foreigners.

I'm SURE that VZ has the same law.

Here's article 132:

Article 132. The National Armed Forces form a non-political, obedient, and non-deliberative institution, organized by the State to ensure the national defense, the stability of democratic institutions, and respect for the Constitution and the laws, the observance of which shall always be above any other obligation. The National Armed Forces shall be at the service of the Republic, and in no case at that of any person or political faction.

Perhaps there's a "no foreign donors" statute that implements article 132.

[bemildred]

8. Might well be against the law, I'm just saying

it doesn't fit the charge (as I understood it). Undermining
the republic would seem in the nature of treason, so I was
wondering what they had to support that, as opposed to mere
graft and corruption sort of things.

[AP]

10. You were looking at the wrong law.

[bemildred]

11. I wasn't looking at any law.

I was reading a story on the internet.
This one I think:

http://www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=22976

Not the Constitution, penal code. Here is Venzanalysis on it:

http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/news.php?newsno=1375

Edit: According to Ortega, the investigation revealed that Súmate leaders requested financial support from the US National Endowment for Democracy (NED) in their attempts to oust Chávez.

[AP]

12. That was your problem then.

You expressed skepticism about how the law could be applied without knowing what the law was. Thus your confussion.

I hope the translation below clears things up for you.

[bemildred]

13. Curiosity is not skepticism, nor is it confusion.

The translation in combination with the bolded part of
post #11 "cleared it up for me".

[AP]

14. It's pretty close though.

There are fine lines between skepticism, confusion and a "wonder" coupled with a "curiosity" not satisfied with a task as simple as googling.

[bemildred]

15. Yeah, what do I know about what I'm thinking?

No doubt I'm "confused" about that too.

[AP]

16. Whatever.

It wasn't so much what you thought that I cared about as it was what a casual reader would have implied from your post.

[AP]

7. Oops, it's Art 132 of the Penal Code, not the consittution.

I'll look that up.

[AP]

9. A rough translation of Penal Code Art. 132:

Article 132. - Whoever, inside or outside the national territory, conspires to destroy the Nation's republican political form will be punished with confinement to a military prison for eight to sixteen years.  The same penalty will be imposed on the Venezuelan who asks for the foreign intervention in the matters of Venezuelan domestic policy, or who solicits assistance to upset of the peace of the Republic or through the action of civil employees, or by publications made in the foreign press, he urges civil war in the Republic, or defames the President, or insults the diplomatic Representative, or the consular civil employees of Venezuela, for reason of their public duties, in the country where the act is committed.


It looks like it pretty tightly fits the bill.

It looks like the defense will be that they didn't request the financial assistance.

[Judi Lynn]

17. This bribery crap is really getting obvious, isn't it?

Guess we don't, under _Bush have to be covert anymore when bribery is involved!

U.S. funds aid Chávez opposition
Bookstore

Venezuela: Lonely Planet Travel Survival Kit (3rd Edition)



Published by National Catholic Reporter
April 2, 2004

The United States is using a quasi-governmental organization created during the Reagan years and funded largely by Congress to pump about a million dollars a year into groups opposed to Venezuela President Hugo Chávez, according to officials in Venezuela and a Venezuelan-American attorney.

Some 2,000 pages of newly disclosed documents show that the little-known National Endowment for Democracy is financing a vast array of groups: campesinos, businessmen, former military officials, unions, lawyers, educators, even an organization leading a recall drive against Chávez. Some compare the agency, in certain of its activities, to the CIA of previous decades when the agency was regularly used to interfere in the affairs of Latin American countries.

“It certainly shows an incredible pattern of financing basically every single sector in Venezuelan society,” said Eva Golinger, the Brooklyn, N.Y.-based attorney who helped obtain the documents through Freedom of Information Act requests. “That’s the most amazing part about it.”

One organization, Sumate, which received a $53,400 grant in September, is organizing the recall referendum against Chávez, Golinger said. The head of another group, Leonardo Carvajal of the Asociación Civil Asamblea de Educación, was named education minister by “dictator for a day” Pedro Carmona, a leading businessman who briefly took over Venezuela during an April 2002 coup against Chávez, she said. A leader of a third group assisted by the National Endowment for Democracy and its subsidiary organizations, Leopoldo Martínez of the right-wing Primero Justicia party, was named finance minister by Carmona, she said.

“How can they say they are supporting democracy when they are funding groups that backed the coup?” asked Golinger, head of the pro-Chávez Venezuela Solidarity Committee in New York.

Chris Sabatini, the endowment’s senior program officer for Latin America and the Caribbean, acknowledged the organization is handing out $922,000 this year, largely to groups opposed to Chávez, and gave out $1,046,323 last year. He said pro-Chávez groups have not received funds because they didn’t ask for any or they rejected the National Endowment’s overtures.
(snip/...)http://www.americas.org/item_14356

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This REALLY isn't what we were taught to expect from our gubmint as chillren.

[AP]

18. Dos cosas: (1) what a waste of dólares, y (2) glad it's against los...

...leyes.

Nice of the US to give all these people money when they probably know they're setting them all up for prosecution. Nice of them to give away my money.