Who Is Judge Federico Villena, Hijacker of Venezuela's EMTRASUR Plane in Argentina?

The fate of the Venezuelan EMTRASUR Boeing 747 300-M now awaits the decision of Judge Federico Villena, who oversees jurisdiction at the Ezeiza international airport, in the province of Buenos Aires, Argentina, where the aircraft remains hijacked by the airport authorities and the Argentine judiciary.

As Judge Villena has declared, as long as the investigations and judicial process take place, the four Iranian crew members and three crew members of Venezuelan origin cannot leave Argentine soil.

The remaining 12 members of the crew were authorized to leave Argentina, but the ruling was appealed by Prosecutor Cecilia Incardona, so the judge’s decision was suspended.

It would be useful to analyze Judge Federico Villena’s career to understand his “integrity” as a judge.

Who is Federico Villena?
Federal Judge Federico Villena has been accused of climbing the ladder of the Argentine justice system by building ties with the governments of his country, first with the government of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and then with that of Mauricio Macri.

Villena, according to Argentine right-wing mainstream media La Nación, came to his current position thanks to the support given to him by Silvia Majdalani, who was considered “the powerful ex-number 2 in intelligence during the time of Mauricio Macri.” Villena also received favors from the former governor of Buenos Aires (2015-2019), María Eugenia Vidal.

It should be remembered that in 2019 María Eugenia Vidal, who is now a Congressmember from Buenos Aires, participated in looting of Venezuelan assets in Argentina, specifically in the docks of Dock Sud in Buenos Aires province. Vidal also stole assets of the Venezuelan company Petrolera del Cono Sur SA (PCSA), a subsidiary of PDVSA, in charge of fuel distribution in the Río de la Plata region of Argentina and operator of a fuel distribution plant and several service stations in the region.

In 2019, Vidal also favored the “interim government” of Juan Guaidó by supporting Elisa Trotta Gamus, pseudo-ambassador of the fake government of Juan Guaidó, to steal PCSA assets.

Federico Villena has been accused of “zigzagging”in the national politics and has been at the center of various operations. He led a mega-operation to arrest 22 former intelligence agents, a procedure that was even questioned by several personalities of the Macri government in 2020.

According to La Nación, since his promotion to his current position in 2015, Villena “forged relationships with the entire political spectrum and, like many of his fellow criminals, with the intelligence services.”

Villena “should thank Kirchnerism, which made him a judge with decree 992/2015 (signed by Cristina Kirchner and Julio Alak, as Minister of Justice), as well as Macrism, for the progress in recent years in his judicial career,” reported La Nación. “He was promoted to Lomas de Zamora with decree 1168/2018 (signed by Macri and by Minister Germán Garavano). The transfer was confirmed on December 26, the day after Christmas, with the Cambiemos [Macri] administration recently inaugurated in power.”

In 2021 Villena was accused of “poor performance,” “arbitrariness” and “serious negligence” by Federal Attorney Cecilia Incardona; the head of the Attorney General’s Office against Narco-criminality (PROCUNAR), Diego Iglesias; and the other federal judge in Lomas de Zamora, Juan Pablo Augé, reported Clarín.

The officials pointed out that Villena had acted “expressly” to unfreeze and return $400,000 to Karina Moyano that had been seized in an arrest. Moyano was involved in a drug trafficking investigation. However, Villena was favored by the Attorney General’s Office in his country, that cleared him of all responsibilities.

In May of this year, just a month before the hijacking of EMTRASUR’s Boeing 747 300-M, Villena was in the eye of the hurricane, having been put under investigation by the authorities for “money laundering.” He became a principal talking point in the media.

Villena was also being questioned about the purchase of a house for which he had declared a lower than market price and which was financed with allegedly fabricated loans and sales of fictitious real estate. He was charged by the Office of the Attorney for Economic Crime and Money Laundering (PROCELAC), headed by Attorney Diego Velasco.

The property that Villena acquired is located in Zuviría street, in Flores, Capital Federal. He bought it in October 2020. He declared its price as $400,000, but its real price would be almost double, about $790,000, as reported by Clarín and as some judicial sources confirmed to La Nación.

Emtrasur no está incluida en las listas de medidas coercitivas unilaterales de Estados Unidos. Y el Boeing 747 YV3531 tampoco está sujeto a ninguna "sanción" estadounidense https://t.co/ywRjEBNsuc
— MV (@Mision_Verdad) June 18, 2022

Villena made the purchase using cash and has claimed that he accessed that money through “loans from his friends.” He claimed that he made the purchase quickly, needed the cash quickly and “it was the middle of a pandemic.”

As Villena admitted in an interview with Clarín,”A businessman lent me a large sum of money, a lawyer lent me $50,000, and another person has it in his affidavit. They are people I trust, honest people.”

Judicial and media maneuver
The case against the cargo plane belonging to EMTRASUR, a subsidiary of the Venezuelan state airline Conviasa, has no basis except public statements made by Villena expressing suspicions and presumptions about the landing of the plane in Argentina and about its crew.

Villena has constantly made incongruous and unfounded statements not subject to evidence, and has never considered any evidence provided from the Venezuelan side. On the contrary, he has instigated opinion matrices in the media, using words like “terrorism,” “espionage,” “suspicion” and “doubts” about the plane and its crew.

So far, after searching the aircraft, going through the phones of the crew members, and reviewing the data and names of the crew, no Argentine police entity has been able to discover any evidence that may refer to terrorist activities related to the crew and the aircraft.

Villena considers himself an “anti-terrorist” activist. Regarding the case of the Emtrasur plane, he has alluded to the terrorist attacks against the Israeli Embassy in his country in the 1990s (the AMIA case), trying to create a narrative link between those events and the present.

He has repeatedly referred to one of the pilots, the Iranian Gholamreza Gashemi, who has the same name as a former general of the Quds Forces, a division of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, branded a “terrorist organization” by the United States. However, it has been established beyond doubt that the pilot Gashemi is not the same person as the IRGC general, who had passed away in 2012.

The arrival of the EMTRASUR plane in Argentina caused a media sensation and the questioning from the opposition, especially from the Jewish community. Indeed, Israel has activated diplomatic spokespersons in Argentina and Paraguay, indicating its position in favor of the seizure of the plane, which had previously belonged to the Iranian airline Mahan Air, also under US-imposed unilateral coercive measures.

However, despite Villena’s political ties, he is constantly pressured by Argentine media and politicians, especially those from the right wing, and even by the Delegation of Argentine Israelite Associations (DAIA), the political arm of the Argentine zionism, who insist on the confiscation of the aircraft and have displayed their influence on public opinion.

The complexity of this situation where the lines between the judicial, the political and the media are blurred shows that Villena has managed to distract public opinion from the allegations of money laundering against him. In addition, at the expense of the EMTRASUR case, he may be building agreements and alliances with forces of economic and political power in his country to gain a foothold in his position and even climb further on the structure of the Argentine judiciary.

Such a probability has been fueled by opinion leaders of Argentina and would be in full accordance with his background and record.

The opportunity is also formidable for Villena to ingratiate himself with US influence in Argentina, if he is to rule in favor of the request for the confiscation of the aircraft issued recently by the US Department of Justice under pseudo-legal allegations. The possible overcompliance of Washington’s coercive measures would once again confirm that the blockade against Venezuela is still in place and there is no relief in sight.

(Misión Verdad)

Translation: Orinoco Tribune

OT/FV/SC