The woman's knuckles whiten as she grips the wheel and jerks the car onto a narrow Caracas street. She has already mapped the safest route out of the city countless times. But tonight she repeatedly checks the rear-view mirror to be sure there's no tail. Even at 3 a.m., lights from the barrios stare down from the hills like all-seeing eyes.
George Martinez
Banker Eligio Cedeño was imprisoned for three years without a conviction.
George Martinez
Broker Tomás Vásquez Estrella wore a wire to help the FBI arrest a Venezuelan official who was extorting him.
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A man slumps low in the passenger seat next to her, his sunglasses and hat hiding his face. With good reason: For eight days, his visage has been splashed across newspaper front pages and TV screens across Venezuela. A government website calls for his capture "vivo o muerto": dead or alive.
They head northwest until the capital's glittering skyscrapers disappear behind El Ávila mountain. Only then does the man begin to relax. For a week he has hidden in a tiny apartment. Before that, there were 33 months in a six-by-nine-foot jail cell. Yet his journey is far from over.
An hour after leaving the city, the car pulls into an empty sports complex in the resort city of La Guaira. The woman cuts the headlights and parks next to a dirt soccer field overlooking the ocean. As salt spray whips the windshield, she hurriedly opens the rear door. The man unfurls a parachute and attaches it to what looks like a giant metal fan. The two friends exchange a quick embrace. Then he lifts the paraglider onto his back, starts the motor, and soars off into the night.
Several hours later, the small Caribbean fishing village of Adícora slowly stirs to life. It's a week before Christmas, and decorations dance in the wind. On the beach, a handful of fishermen prepare their brightly painted peñeros to go out on the water.
Suddenly, one of the anglers spots a strange black dot against the sunrise. A figure slowly takes shape as the paraglider whines closer. Finally, a middle-aged man in baggy surf shorts and a T-shirt lands on the beach with a soft thud like a Navy SEAL. He pulls off his helmet to reveal an orange and black mop of poorly bleached curls and a gnarly sunburn.
Eligio Cedeño, Venezuela's most wanted man, tosses his flight equipment into the ocean and walks over to the stunned fishermen. "How much to take me to Curaçao?" he asks in an affected gringo accent.
"How much do you have?" one leather-skinned seaman shoots back. The stranger tosses him a rucksack. Inside are 30,000 bolívares, roughly $5,000. "Will that do?"
If the fisherman recognizes his famous passenger, he doesn't let on. Without a word, he pushes his small wooden boat onto the water and fires up the outboard motor. Cedeño — bitter enemy of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez — jumps aboard.
Cedeño's remarkable escape in 2009 from Caracas to Curaçao and eventually Miami ended a judicial hell in which bogus charges gave way to farcical trials and three years in a windowless cell. His flight unleashed a whirlwind crackdown on judges, lawyers, friends, and fellow bankers — scores of whom have since also fled to South Florida, which boasts the largest Venezuelan population outside the South American nation.
But in a bizarre reversal of fortune, the case of Eligio Cedeño has come back to haunt Hugo Chávez and threaten his grip on Venezuela. Cedeño's imprisonment has shaken the fiery leader's international standing. Meanwhile, an extortion attempt by Venezuelan officials against one of Cedeño's best friends has exposed the corruption at the core of Chávez's Bolivarian Revolution.
Perhaps worse for Chávez, Cedeño has reprised his role as chief backer of the opposition ahead of next year's Venezuelan presidential elections. Armed with $160 million and powerful friends across the Americas, he is the most recognizable face of South Florida's swelling Venezuelan population. It's an exilio vino tinto that, like its Cuban predecessor 50 years ago, will stop at nothing when it comes to unseating the comandante.
Hugo Chávez shifted uncomfortably in his dark suit and tie. Sweat beaded on his broad forehead. Running dead last among four presidential candidates, the military commander-turned-socialist firebrand had agreed to attend a weekly forum called "Get to Know Your Candidate." But the expensive event was the type of capitalist excess that he railed against: a private gathering of executives from multinational corporations and superrich Venezuelan bankers. Chávez sat alone at a table awaiting his chance to tell the oligarchs how they were ruining the oil-soaked country.
The year was 1998. At age 33, Eligio Cedeño was the youngest man in the room, but by no means was he the least wealthy. With light-brown skin, curly hair, and an aquiline nose, the precocious banker looked like a younger version of the candidate brooding across the room. Curious about Chávez, Cedeño walked over and introduced himself. As soon as he described his childhood in La Bombilla, a ramshackle barrio in an impoverished area of eastern Caracas known as Petare, a light switched on in the future leader's eyes.
"You understand then," Chávez said conspiratorially. "These businessmen have been corrupting our politicians for decades. Look!" he said, sweeping his hand toward Cedeño's friends and business partners. "Venezuela has become an utter embarrassment. What this country needs is for someone to rule with a firm hand." Coming from a man who had launched a coup only six years earlier — and had served two years in jail for the deadly uprising — Chávez's words were no idle threat. They were a road map to revolution.
