FUGITIVE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000706850015-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 23, 2010
• Sequence Number: 15
• Publication Date: November 12, 1983
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/23: CIA-RDP90-00552R000706850015-1
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
12 November 1983
BROWNSVILL, TEXAS
FUGITIVE
A federal prosecutor charged Thursday that fugitive financier Robert Vesco
is living in a beachhouse in Cuba and has been masterminding the smuggling of
banned goods from the United States to the communist Caribbean island.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Jack Wolfe made the allegation during an argument
outside the hearing of the jury that is trying a man for conspiracy to violate
the Trading with the Enemy Act by allegedly trying to ship $729,337.50 worth of
sugar processing machinery to Cuba.
Wolfe told U.S. District Judge Filemon Vela that attorney Richard Silvio
Bettini allegedly flew to Cuba by way of Mexico and met with Vesco after the
trio was charged. Wolfe allegedl that Vesco arranged for the $50,000 cash bonds
for the defendants.
Only one defendant, Mexican Salvador Ramirez Preciado, appeared for the trial
which opened this week. Another defendant, Alejo Quintero Peralta, reportedly
died in Mexico and Albert Ahthony Volpe, a Canadian with organized crime links,
jumped his $50,000 bond and is a fugitive.
Bettini has been in the courtroom during two days of trial, but Vela denied
Wolfe's motion to develop the lawyer's alleged Vesco connection before the jury.
''Mr. Bettini is a lifelong acquantnance of Mr. Vesco and they went to school
together in Detroit,'' Wolfe said. ''He was told to catch a plane to Cancun (in
Yucatan, Mexico) and was met at the airport and told he was being flown to
Cozumel.''
Instead, Wolfe said, Bettini was taken to Havana and was picked up by Vesco.
"Vesco needed a warehouse in Houston and he instructed Bettini to procure it
for him. In the end, Vesco did lease the warehouse.''
The prosecutor said that a New York man later brought $240,000 across the
border from Matamoros, Mexico, and provided the money to post the cash bonds for
the three defendants.
The three were arrested last July 10 at the nearby Harlingen International
Airport where U.S. Customs seized 31 crates of machinery being loaded aboard a
Boeing 707 jet.
The machinery was to be used to pellitize sugar cane waste materials into
energy pellets that would have allowed the Cubans to protected much-needed
petroleum fuels and fire their sugar milsl with the pellitized pulp, or bagasse,
which is left over after sugar is extracted, federal officials said.
Federal officials alleged that Vesco, wanted in the United States in
connection with $300 million mutual fund swindle, is orchestrating a scheme to
thwart an american economic blockade of Cuba by routing prohbited technology
through Canada and other nations with open trade relations with the Fidel Castro
regime.
CONTINUED
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/23: CIA-RDP90-00552R000706850015-1
 Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/23: CIA-RDP90-00552R000706850015-1
In the case on trial, prosecutors allege the three men paid a charter airline
$30,000 to fly the goods to Merida, Mexico, instead of the destination of Coasta
Rica listed on the flight plan. From there, they charge, a Canadian air freignt
company was to have transferred to the merchandize to Canada, where it would be
picked up by a Cuban plane.
The Brownsville Herald Thursday quoted government sources as saying the FBI,
CIA and other national security organizations were compiling a file on the
case.
The report that Vesco may be in Cuba was the first on his whereabouts since
the fugitive U.S. officials requested his extradition from Antigua.
Vesco lived awhile in Coasta Rica until he was expelled in 1978 for allegedly
getting involved in internal polics. He then went to the Bahamas where he also
was expelled in 1981 for alleged drug trafficking.
Vesco allegedly was involved in schemes involving both the Richard Nixon and
Jimmy Carter administrations.
Nixon's friend, Bebe Robozo, once was investigated for his connections to
Vesco, and during the Carter years, Vesco allegedly attempted to influence the
White House through W. Spencer Lee Iv, Carter's former campaign manager, to help
solve his legal problems.
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/23: CIA-RDP90-00552R000706850015-1