February 18, 2008
BY JAY WEAVER
The roots of a controversial indictment brought this month against prominent Miami lawyer Ben Kuehne were planted six years ago, when a money broker allegedly transferred $1.8 million in drug cash from federal undercover operations to the legal defense fund of a Colombian kingpin.
The broker, the money and the sting are now at the heart of the case against Kuehne and two Colombian codefendants. They are charged in federal court in Miami with laundering drug proceeds because they vouched for $5.2 million in tainted legal fees paid by trafficker Fabio Ochoa Vasquez to his high-profile attorney, Roy Black.
The money broker, Hernando Saravia, became an informant for federal agents in the Ochoa fee case in early 2002, after he was caught in a separate government sting operation trying to move $400,000 in drug sales from New York to Colombia, according to law enforcement sources familiar with his case.
He was recently arrested in Colombia on the federal charge of conspiring to launder drug money in New York, according to the Justice Department, which declined to comment further.
Prosecutors will now rely on Saravia as a key witness in their case against Kuehne as they try to prove that the well-respected lawyer knew the Colombian was an illicit money broker and that he schemed to conceal some of Ochoa's legal payments. Black was not charged because he had Kuehne as a buffer.
LAWYERS WATCHING
The complex case is being closely watched around the country, especially among criminal defense attorneys, because it is the first time the federal government has prosecuted a lawyer for approving fees paid by a drug trafficker to another lawyer.
Kuehne was hired by Black to assess the Ochoa family's ranch assets, including breeding horses and cattle, for the one-time Medellín drug lord's defense at trial in 2002-03. Kuehne worked with Colombian accountant Gloria Flores Velez and Colombian lawyer Oscar Saldarriaga Ochoa on the assessment, ranch sales and wire transfers to Black.
In the Kuehne indictment, Justice Department prosecutors accuse Flores and Saldarriaga -- not Kuehne -- of buying dollars from the "proceeds of narcotics" trafficking and converting them on the "black market peso exchange" for Ochoa.
The indictment alleges Kuehne -- along with the Colombian pair -- attributed 13 wire transfers to Saravia totaling $1.8 million for Ochoa's legal fund. Prosecutors say the money really came from "currency pickups" in five undercover narcotics operations, citing Saravia's direct involvement in 2002.
Here's how the pickups went down: U.S.-based traffickers seeking to convert millions of dollars to pesos for the Colombian cartels put the word out on the street that they had money to move. In turn, FBI and IRS undercover agents using informants infiltrated eight currency pickups in Miami, New York and Houston to transfer drug dollars through the U.S. banking system for conversion on the black market peso exchange.
The main goal of the sting operations was to enable federal agents to track drug money transferred within the United States and to major cocaine-supplying countries such as Colombia. In the Kuehne case, some of the dirty money was pumped through his Miami trust account to Black's account, according to the indictment.
In four letters, however, Kuehne attributed the $1.8 million to Saravia, saying he was a "reputable" businessman who owned flower and gem businesses that arranged the transfer of "legitimate" dollars for Ochoa to pay his attorney, Black.
According to the indictment, Kuehne attached a copy of a letter he had received from Saravia as further evidence, including the names of his businesses and the sale of his Miami home as proof.
But agents said it was all a front, saying Saravia never drafted the letter and that his signature was forged. Moreover, the indictment said, Saravia's two businesses were owned and operated by undercover law enforcement authorities.
So was Kuehne set up by federal agents or was he part of an alleged plot to wash dirty drug money for a Colombian kingpin's legal defense?
That remains unclear, but some legal and money-laundering experts say the government's sting operation appears suspicious.
"What really makes this stink is that behind the relied-upon documented sources of this money was, in fact, a government sting operation," said Miami lawyer Thomas Tew, who has been involved in numerous bank and securities fraud cases over the years.
"If Saravia was cooperating, and it appears that he was, then Saravia and the government were working together to conceal the source of the dirty money at their end from Kuehne," Tew said. "Kuehne should have suspected the [two] Colombians were unreliable. However, how would he have known that a U.S. sting operation was behind the money attributed to Saravia and his businesses? The government was placing him in harm's way in a classic entrapment. Who better to conceal the dirty money than a government sting operation?"
Others agreed.
"Since available information seems to indicate that Saravia played a key role in landing Kuehne in the dock, the question becomes: Did Saravia help prosecutors to snare a laundryman or did he set up an innocent, high-profile target to take a fall?" said Brett Wolf, a U.S. money-laundering analyst with Complinet, a London-based firm that helps financial institutions meet their compliance obligations.
"Taking into account Kuehne's outstanding reputation, one must assume the latter until such time as prosecutors present compelling evidence to the contrary," Wolf said. "They clearly haven't done so at this time."
South Florida lawyer Myles Malman, a former federal prosecutor, said Saravia's informant role became the linchpin to the government's case against Kuehne.
"Saravia has the chip in his pocket -- the Ochoa linkage to the money in Colombia for his defense fund in Miami," Malman said. "He's helping federal agents by becoming an undercover informant, an active informant. He's a key witness in the Kuehne case."
Justice Department spokesman Paul Bresson declined to comment.
Kuehne's defense attorneys, John Nields and Jane Moscowitz, also declined to comment.
NO EVIDENCE
Henry Bell, the attorney for Flores, the Colombian accountant, said his client hasn't violated any laws.
"No one has been able to demonstrate to me any evidence showing Gloria knew Saravia was a phony or that his companies were phony," said Bell, adding that Flores believed Saravia was a legitimate businessman.
Saldarriaga's attorney, Joaquin Mendez, said his client had a "minimal role" in assisting Kuehne in evaluating the legitimacy of Ochoa's funds for his legal defense. He said Saldarriaga devoted his time to helping Black on the trial. Ochoa was convicted on cocaine-smuggling charges in May 2003 and sentenced to 30 years in prison.
Asked about the allegation that his client was using Ochoa's pesos to buy dollars from drug proceeds, Mendez said: "The theory of the prosecution is that Gloria, Oscar and others were doing this in Colombia. We categorically deny any involvement with that.
"Why would anyone knowingly convert clean pesos from Ochoa's sale of [ranch] assets into dirty dollars and go to such lengths to do that? It doesn't add up."
Mid-Trial Offer of Probation for Client
