Top judge’s sentence for extortion charges associated with illicit drugs trade taints late Venezuelan president and party
It was meant to be a relaxing holiday at Disney World for Benny Palmeri-Bacchi, a senior Venezuelan judge, and his family. A chance to unwind at the Florida fantasy land from the stresses of the job.
But the fairytale vacation quickly became a nightmare when his plane from Caracas was greeted by federal agents at Miami airport and he found himself carted off to jail.
Now, after a secretive and far-reaching inquiry by US investigators into links between Venezuelan government officials and Colombian drugs cartels, Palmeri, 46, will be spending at least 20 years in prison.
Prosecutors had accused Palmeri of taking bribes to ease shipments of cocaine through Venezuela to Mexico and the Caribbean for distribution in the US, and his admission of guilt in a federal court in Miami this week – on money laundering, conspiracy and extortion charges – marks the first time an ally of the late Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez has been tied to the Colombian drugs trade.
The prosecutors dropped a charge claiming Palmeri was involved in the distribution of cocaine in return for his pleading guilty on the three other counts, each of which carries a 20-year jail term.
Harry Landen, a Venezuela expert and professor of political science at the University of South Florida, said of the case: “Whether the Venezuelan government is embarrassed by this depends on how senior this judge was, how close he was to the previous party of Chavez or the new party of Maduro, and who he knew. If they’re smart they’ll write him off as a rogue agent, someone acting on his own and whose activities they condemn completely.”
Palmeri’s plea deal recommends that his terms be served concurrently, although the US district court judge Ursula Ungaro has the discretion at the sentencing hearing in February to make them run consecutively.
The case against Palmeri was based largely on assistance from informants and built by a team of Miami narcotics investigators led by the veteran justice department prosecutor Richard Gregorie – who had brought down the Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega in 1992.
According to Gregorie, Palmeri frequently took bribes to help Venezuelan-based cartel members continue their activities, and used “force, violence and fear” to extract money or ensure silence.
In one instance, the indictment alleged, Palmeri threatened an estate agent by e-mailing photographs of a man being murdered and videos of prisoners being sodomised in Venezuelan prisons.
Authorities saw an opportunity to get Palmer when he applied for a visa at the US embassy in Caracas for his family holiday to Florida. Palmeri’s Miami-based lawyer, Edward Abramson, told the court at his initial appearance after his arrest in July, that his client had walked into “a bear trap” of the US government’s creation.
At first Palmeri had pleaded not guilty to all charges but changed his mind apparently in return for co-operating with investigators. Prosecutors dropped the distribution charge, which carried a sentence of life.
Gregorie’s office did not respond to a request from the Guardian for comment.
Palmeri was one of three men indicted in December 2013 by department of justice investigators looking into the Cartel of the Suns, a loose alliance of government and military officials in the government of long-time Venezuelan president Chavez, before his death last year . All were believed to be conspiring with the Colombians.
The biggest fish slipped the net in the summer.
Hugo Carvajal Barrios, a general and the country’s former military intelligence chief, was arrested in Aruba in July at the request of the US, when he arrived to take up his new role as Venezuela’s consul-general on the Netherlands-controlled Caribbean island.
Carvajal, named by the US Treasury department in 2008 as a “drugs kingpin”, assisted the narcotics trafficking activities of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) according to his indictment. But instead of sending him to Miami to face trial, the Dutch government bowed to pressure from a delegation of Venezuelan officials sent to the island, and released him.
Nicolas Maduro, who succeeded Chavez as president, complained that Carvajal had been kidnapped despite his diplomatic immunity, and threatened economic reprisals against Aruba.
