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CRIMINAL LAW
Prosecutors will not tie money to attorney at trial
By John Pacenti
August 8, 2008 | Daily Business Review
In a surprising turnabout, federal prosecutors who indicted prominent Miami attorney Ben Kuehne on money laundering charges now say they plan to offer no trial evidence directly linking him to drug profits.
Instead, the government will offer testimony to show that millions of dollars used to pay Colombian druglord Fabio Ochoa’s high-powered defense team was tainted by the family’s legendary cocaine smuggling network.
“It’s a remarkable document,” former U.S. Attorney Kendall Coffey, who is not involved in the case, said Thursday. “It’s an astonishing acknowledgement of what appears to be a roadmap to a negligence case rather than intentional criminality.”
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Coffey said the government must do more than just show Kuehne may have been negligent in the difficult task of sorting out the good, the bad and the ugly in the Ochoa family fortune.
To gain a conviction, Coffey said prosecutors must prove Kuehne intended to convert illegal drug profits on the black market peso exchange.
The government has no audio tapes that would bolster its case against Kuehne, according to a source close to the investigation.
“Unless they got tapes or some kind of red-hot smoking gun, this case may not get past a dismissal motion,” said Coffey, a name partner with Coffey Burlington in Miami.
He said a good example of giving a negligent but not criminal opinion was former Secretary of State Colin Powell’s testimony to the United Nations that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.
“You can be wrong giving an opinion, even tragically wrong,” Coffey said.
The attorney said it is ironic that the clearest traceable illegal funds are the government’s own money from the drug stings. He said it’s not illegal to be fooled by your own government.
“The government is going to be talking out of both sides of its mouth because it was doing everything it could to create this scam,” Coffey said.
John Pacenti can be reached at (305) 347-6638.