ATLANTA (CN) — An attorney for a Venezuelan billionaire with alleged cartel ties asked the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Wednesday to overturn a Florida federal judge’s demand that the billionaire pay $53 million to victims of a Colombian terrorist kidnapping.
Samark Jose Lopez Bello, a fugitive whose capture for crimes against the United States comes with a $5 million reward, has challenged the seizure of his properties and the garnishment of his bank accounts under a $318 million judgment against the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). The paramilitary group was sued in 2013 by the four surviving victims of a 2003 kidnapping.
In April 2020, a Florida federal judge ordered that Lopez Bello’s accounts at five banks be garnished and his waterfront Miami property sold.
During oral arguments conducted via Zoom, an attorney for Lopez Bello told a three-judge panel of the Atlanta-based appeals court that the lower court made a mistake when it ruled that his client is “an agent or instrumentality” of the FARC.
In a ruling adopted by U.S. District Judge Robert Scola, Jr., U.S. Magistrate Judge Edwin Torres determined in March 2020 that Lopez Bello’s assets can be used to satisfy the outstanding $300 million balance on the judgment against the FARC. Although Lopez Bello has not been directly linked to FARC forces, Torres determined that Lopez Bello is indirectly connected to the group through his association with Tareck Zaidan El Aissami Maddah, Venezuela’s Minister of Industries.
El Aissami is allegedly affiliated with the Cartel of the Suns, which traffics cocaine manufactured and produced by the FARC.
Summing up Lopez Bello’s arguments against the judgment, Obama-appointed U.S. Circuit Judge Adalberto Jordan explained, “Lopez Bello says the evidence against him involved an inferential and circumstantial chain. … In [Lopez Bello’s] view it is a very big, inferential line of causation.”
Arguing on behalf of the plaintiffs, Miami attorney Richard Rosenthal said the connection was much more direct. Rosenthal told the panel that witnesses testified that Lopez Bello himself is a member of the cartel.
Attorney Adam Fels, of Fridman Fels & Soto, said Rosenthal’s is based on hearsay. He cautioned the panel that making a finding supporting the use of “multiple indirect chains” to reach conclusions about Lopez Bello could have undesirable consequences.
“You’re going to be removing the predictability and security that have drawn foreign investments to this country. Banks who happen to have their accounts blocked by [the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Asset Control] for any reason, often with little to no concrete evidence, can have millions taken away by a creative plaintiff who can connect one account holder to another, to another individual, to a terrorist organization,” Fels said. “And knowing your client is one thing but you cannot possibly have the foresight to know what’s happening several chain-links down the road.”
Fels also argued that there are issues of fact remaining in the case which entitle Lopez Bello to a jury trial under Florida law. The attorney said the 11th Circuit should reverse the district court’s findings because the issue of whether a judgment should be entered against his client is better left up to a jury.





