Documents sealed in "100 drug plane" court case...

April 24 2008
by Daniel Hopsicker

The biggest fish busted so far in the laundered-drug-money-for-American-planes scheme used by Mexico’s powerful Sinaloa cartel to purchase 100 airplanes in the U.S. has cut a secret deal with federal prosecutors in Miami, and agreed to testify against others involved, the MadCowMorningNews has learned.

The news is one of a series of recent developments in the scandal, which erupted in the wake of the massive drug hauls seized on two drug planes busted in Mexico’s Yucatan just eighteen months apart carrying, between them, more than ten tons of cocaine.

Also last week, a federal judge in Mexico City ordered the extradition to the U.S. of Pedro Alatorre Damy, identified by the DEA and the Attorney General of Mexico as the main money launderer for Joaquin Guzman, “El Chapo,” leader of the Sinaloa cartel.

And in another development which hits close to home (at least for this reporter) the MadCowMorningNews has been contacted by attorneys for two figures in the case, both threatening lawsuits.


Chickens make way home to roost

The first offer to sue came in a letter from a San Antonio attorney on behalf of Dennis Nixon, Chairman of Texas bank International Bancshares of San Antonio (IBC).

Based on the border with Mexico in Laredo Texas, IBC Bank was used in the money-laundering scheme, according to an FBI affidavit filed in the case.

We knew little else about the bank, however, until we received the letter threatening a lawsuit, and we certainly had no idea at the time that the bank’s co-founder, top investor and principal owner, Tony Sanchez, had once the target of accusations that millions of dollars of drug money had been knowingly laundered through his Texas thrift, called Tesoro Savings & Loan.

Before failing in 1988, at a cost to American taxpayers of $161 million, the thrift was accused of laundering $25 million in Mexican drug money, not exactly the ideal credential for a bank founder and owner.

But, we soon discovered, it gets worse…

The drug money Sanchez’s S& L was accused of raking in allegedly belonged to the very same drug traffickers who had recently witnessed, directed, recorded and participated in the infamous torture-murder in Mexico of American DEA agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena.


Gaping jaws, violated rectums, buried alive
Camarena's disappearance while on assignment in Mexico in 1985 had briefly strained relations between the U.S. and Mexico, especially after the agent’s body was found in a shallow grave, along with that of a long-time fellow agent and pilot.

Cadaver No. 1, as Red Cross doctors on the scene labeled it, had been that of a muscular Hispanic male in his thirties. The left side of the skull was caved in, three ribs were broken, as well as the right arm. The body also showed numerous lesions; a foreign object, possibly a stick, had been forced into the rectum.

The rectum of Cadaver No. 2, a heavyset adult male in his forties, had also been violated, the doctors said. The jaw was gaping, and the hands had broken free of their bonds, and doctors were of the opinion that the man had been buried alive.

Texas justice aside, we have decided that this is one lawsuit we will happily defend.


Guyanese pilot with U.S. all-access "hall pass"
At almost the same time as this news, we received a second letter threatening to file suit. The letter was from a Fort Lauderdale lawyer on behalf of Guyanese pilot Michael Francis Brassington, who we have reported to be linked to the massive corruption scandal roiling U.S. Customs in South Florida.

What lies at the heart of the 100 plane scandal, according to a high-ranking DEA official we spoke to in Miami, is a corrupt U.S. Customs operation run out of Florida.

Although DEA affidavits in the case suspiciously neglected to mention his name, Brassington had been the co-pilot on the Learjet belonging to terror flight school owner Wallace J. Hilliard busted on a runway at Orlando Executive Airport during July of 2000, the same month Mohamed Atta began flying lessons at Hilliard’s flight school.

According to the Orlando Sentinel, it was the biggest heroin bust in Central Florida history. The Lear was found to be carrying 43 pound of heroin, an amount which is known in the drug trade as “heavy weight,” as in "He's moving heavy weight every week.'

In innumerable television interviews with Rudi Dekkers, Hilliard's flight school front man, in the days and weeks after the 9/11 attack, Dekkers said Mohamed Atta told him that he was from Afghanistan, a country at that time dominated by the Taliban and Osama bin Laden producing well over half (it produces a much higher percentage currently) of the world’s heroin, and was


"Gang-sued' is new legal term

It goes without saying (or should) that the link between Mohamed Atta’s presence at Hilliard’s flight school simultaneous with the massive heroin seizure aboard Wally Hilliard’s Learjet has never been explained.

While the threat of being “gang-sued” from multiple directions at once is a daunting prospect for our ability to continue reporting the story, it also seems to be a sure sign of deepening scandal.

The first new development took place in a Federal court in Miami last week, where Pedro Benavides-Natera, allegedly one of the key figures in the money-laundering scheme which Mexico’s powerful Sinaloa Cartel used to finance the U.S. plane-buying spree, was about to go on trial on multiple felony money laundering charges.

Instead, he cut a deal, and will now presumably be testifying against others in the scheme, in which the ultimate target may be America’s current bete noire, Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez.
http://www.madcowprod.com/04242008.html


:wow:

his own job right, to make the reforms needed by the vast majority of the Venezuelan population, which have been ignored for so many, MANY years by previous Venzuelan oligarchy clown Presidents.

There's just not enough time in the world for him to be responsible for all the crimes right-wingers plots attempt to ascribe to him. He's one busy guy just doing the GOOD things which are so desperately needed, to screw around in things like this, or any of the other idiotic schemes a-holes attempt to pin on the guy.

Time out for sanity, please!

It will be interesting to see where they try to take this.

Instead, he cut a deal, and will now presumably be testifying against others in the scheme, in which the ultimate target may be America’s current bete noire, Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez.

:hi:

of Chavez than his use of oil profits to benefit the poor--which riles them plenty already. Chavez, also Evo Morales in Bolivia, and Rafael Correa Ecuador, seem to be onto this U.S.-Bush "war on drugs" racket. They oppose it for several reasons--it has been used to lard $5.5 BILLION in military aid on the fascist government of Colombia, the main threat to peace in the region; it targets small peasant farmers with pesticide spraying which harms human DNA and kills animals and food crops, and it drives the peasants (the best food producers) from the land into urban squalor; U.S. toxic and murderous tactics regularly spill over their borders; the U.S. air base at Manta, Ecuador, ostensibly for "war on drugs" surveillance was recently more than likely used to aid Colombia in bombing/invading Ecuador to kill the chief FARC hostage negotiator, Raul Reyes, and 24 others (including Ecuadoran and Mexican citizens); it has become obvious that U.S. bases are not benign, and the illicit cocaine/weapons traffic, and related crimes, just keep pouring through these countries, despite Venezuela's and others' REAL efforts to interdict it.

These leftist leaders seem to be aware that the U.S. "war on drugs" is not intended to stop illicit drug traffic, but rather to direct it--to smooth the way for the big drug lords (the ones protected by the Colombian fascists, for instance), to clear the land for Monsanto & other biofuel production and other exploitation purposes, and to spy on and plan war against the LEGITIMATE, ELECTED, SOVEREIGN governments of Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia and other non-cooperators in the phony "war on drugs," the phony "war on terror," and U.S. corporate greed.

But IF, by their rejection of the "war on drugs," and their pursuit of honest anti-drug policy, these leftist leaders are INTERFERING with major Bush Cartel criminal operations--drugs/weapons trafficking--that may be as compelling a reason for their hatred of Chavez, and increasing demonization of Correa and Morales as well, as the reasons we are aware of (the Bushites want to restore global corporate predator control of the oil and other resources in this region, and they of course want to destabilize and topple real democracies). We know that the Bushites' main go-to guy in Colombia (the so-called president of Colombia, Alvaro Uribe) and many of his cohorts are closely tied to rightwing paramilitary death squads, and their drugs/weapons trafficking. Uribe was the go-to guy for the Medellin Cartel in his early career. Are the Bushites raking off profits from the cocaine traffic and associated crimes, and is this the core reality of the corruption in the Florida U.S. customs operation (something I hadn't been aware of)?

I've been aware that something is not right in the Miami US-DofJ office. That became obvious with the ridiculous Bush-CIA "suitcase full of money" caper out of Miami--this absurd story of a 2-Jaguars-in-the-driveway Miami "businessman" carrying $800,000 in cash into Argentina, then turning up as the chief witness in a Miami Bushbot U.S. Attorney's case, with the Bushbot U.S. Atty saying that the money was intended for leftist Cristina Fernandez's campaign for president, from Hugo Chavez. He is prosecuting a couple of people for "failure to report to the US-AG as agents of a foreign government"--quite a stretch of a charge--since he has no other business whatsoever involving the U.S. justice system in a political event (or non-event) in South America. This story is being laughed at all over South America, but the Bushbot U.S. Atty is still trying to make some headlines out of it. Perhaps it will be combined with this other story, to give the whole thing more cache. I can't wait to see what that connection will be (the FARC)?

The funny part of the "suitcase full of money" story is that, according to the Bushbot, Chavez (or his agent) was supposed to have sent the $800,000 in a private jet into Buenos Aires (where it was caught by Argentine customs), whereas Chavez (or his entourage) could have carried it to Cristina Fernandez with diplomatic immunity the next day, when Chavez paid a state visit to Argentina (as pointed out by Venezuela's V-P). Only stupidos from the Bush-CIA would put it on a private jet (or maybe they are foxedos, cuz they wanted it to be stopped and exposed, so Jaguar guy could take up his other role as state's "witness" back in Miami).