Money Laundering Accusations
In March 1991, after the allegations of money laundering were made public, the US Customs Service froze Banco Progreso accounts at Bank of America International in New York.
Castro employed his business associate Charles Intriago to counter the allegations. Intriago was Castro’s principal legal advisors on matters related to the United States. Castro Llanes had provided US$80,000 in start-up capital for Intriago’s newsletter Money Laundering Alert. Intriago eventually got US Customs to release the accounts.
Intriago used his government connections to purge law enforcement files of information linking Castro Llanes to drug trafficking. He hired former US officials and investigators, who between 1991 and 1995 approached several different US government agencies for information. They eventually obtained DEA's intelligence files on Castro Llanes, and the names of at least four confidential informants against Castro Llanes for Customs. A former IRS agent working for Intriago found that some US$4 billion had passed through a Castro account in New York. He gave this information to US Customs agents and was fired by Intriago. New York District Attorney Robert Morgenthau linked Castro to 3,500 offshore corporations in Aruba, Curaçao, and elsewhere. The US$4 billion was never tied definitively to drug trafficking.
On the instigation of Intriago – who was a Democratic National Committee trustee – Castro contributed US$50,000 to the Democratic Party. He attended the January 1993 inauguration of US President Clinton and received red carpet treatment from the Clinton Administration. The donation was reimbursed by one of Castro's Venezuelan companies, making the contributions illegal under US law.
Read more about this topic: Orlando Castro Llanes
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