Federal agents seize more than 80 luxury cars at Port Everglades bound for Venezuela

Jay Weaver July 8, 2020, 7:00 AM

Port Everglades is looking like an auto dealership these days, with rows of high-end vehicles on display, including a Mercedes Biturbo SUV worth a whopping $150,000, and even a few low-end cars, such as a Toyota Corolla valued at a meager $20,000. There are 81 cars lined up, with a collective retail price of $3.2 million. And the feds have confiscated them all, with plans to seize a lot more.

Homeland Security Investigations says the new vehicles have been seized because a ring backed by a notorious Venezuelan billionaire and his associates tried to smuggle them out of South Florida to Venezuela, in violation of U.S. export laws and sanctions against the Latin American nation’s socialist government.

The billionaire, Caracas media mogul Raúl Gorrín, who already faces money-laundering charges in Miami accusing him of stealing from his own government, has been collaborating with straw buyers and shell companies in South Florida to buy the vehicles and ship them to Venezuela for use by the wealthy, the politically connected and the police, HSI officials said.

This is a drop in the bucket,” HSI special agent in charge Anthony Salisbury told the Miami Herald, saying there’s no telling how many cars slipped through Port Everglades to Venezuela before the first unlawful car was intercepted this spring.

But Salisbury, HSI’s top agent, said he’s not expecting any of the straw buyers, shell companies and shippers involved in the car-smuggling ring to make claims for the confiscated vehicles. He also said the seizures should put South Florida businesses involved in the all-cash car deals on notice for potentially violating anti-money-laundering laws.

“The amount the Venezuelan kleptocrats are laundering is staggering,” Salisbury said. “Drug traffickers launder hundreds of millions of dollars. The Venezuelan kleptocrats are laundering billions.”

Asked what his agency plans to do with all the fancy new cars, he said they would be sold at auction, with the proceeds going to the U.S. government.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/federal-agents-seize-more-80-110000860.html