Why drug case against Venezuela’s ‘first nephews’ looks weaker
Last edited Sat Sep 24, 2016, 12:52 AM - Edit history (1)
Source: McClatchy Washington Bureau
Why drug case against Venezuela’s ‘first nephews’ looks weaker
September 23, 2016 5:00 PM
By Franco Ordoñez
fordonez@mcclatchydc.com
WASHINGTON —
The once “slam-dunk” drug case against the nephews of the Venezuelan first family is looking more fragile after a two-day hearing and subsequent court filings that reveal prosecutors’ key confidential sources are tainted with credibility problems.
When Efrain Campo, 29, and Francisco Flores, 30, were charged last year with conspiring to smuggle 800 kilograms of cocaine into the United States, the federal government touted what it said was a strong case: undercover recordings of a massive drug deal, alleged confessions from the two defendants and informants who later said the cousins had done the deal to make money for the congressional campaign of their aunt, first lady Cilia Flores.
But now the U.S. Attorney’s Office is facing questions about their case: whether the so-called voluntary confessions were in fact coerced, how the informants got in touch with the defendants and the propriety of accepting the word of informants, who acknowledge improper conduct while receiving money from the United States, including snorting cocaine and hiring prostitutes. There are questions also about how much the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration knew about what its informants were doing.
“If I were them, I would be nervous,” David Weinstein, a former federal prosecutor who oversaw the narcotics division at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Miami, said of the prosecutors. “The way things are going, the case is not getting better. It’s getting weaker.”
Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/national-security/article103751506.html#storylink=cpy
