A wealthy Venezuelan businessman went on trial Tuesday on U.S. charges that he illegally acted as his government’s agent in an elaborate scheme to conceal the source of $800,000 in political cash carried in a suitcase into Argentina.

Prosecutors say Franklin Duran, 40, was doing the bidding of Venezuela’s intelligence service when he and others used promises of $2 million in cash and veiled threats of violence to make the cover-up work. The FBI taped dozens of conversations between Duran and his alleged cohorts on the telephone and in South Florida restaurants and coffee shops.

Jury selection began Tuesday before U.S. District Judge Joan Lenard, with the trial expected to take up to six weeks. Duran, who has pleaded not guilty, faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted of conspiracy and failing to register with the U.S. as a Venezuelan agent.

The purported cover-up involved a cash-stuffed suitcase brought into Argentina aboard a Venezuelan aircraft in August 2007 that prosecutors say was intended as a contribution for new Argentine President Cristina Fernandez. Both she and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez have denounced the trial as politically motivated, but U.S. officials deny that.

Still, the case has further strained the already sour relationship between the U.S. and Venezuela. Duran’s lawyer, Ed Shohat, has repeatedly insisted the trial is intended mainly to embarrass Chavez and his allies in Latin America and that Duran wasn’t even aware of the registration law he is accused of violating.

“Our view is that this case is a political attack,” Shohat said.

Three other South American men have already pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors. One key witness will be 36-year-old Carlos Kauffmann, Duran’s business partner since 1998 and a source of allegations that the two of them were deeply involved in bribe and kickback schemes with corrupt Venezuelan government officials.

Assistant U.S. Attorney John Shipley said there were at least 14 instances of corruption involving Duran and Kauffman and various officials with Venezuela’s National Guard, its finance and education ministries and with the Vargas and Cojedes states. These involved tens of millions of dollars in kickbacks and bribes paid to ensure government cash went to certain bank accounts, medical insurance and construction contracts and bond finance deals.

One of these bond deals supposedly netted Duran and Kauffmann more than $100 million, some of which they paid as kickbacks to Venezuelan Finance Ministry officials, Shipley said.

When he was arrested by the FBI in December 2007, Duran told agents that he “is able to succeed in Venezuela because he pays off politicians, government employees and high-ranking officials,” according to court documents.

Duran’s motivation for helping cover up the Argentine cash suitcase scandal, prosecutors claim, is to keep that corrupt cash flowing.

Duran’s lawyer called the corruption allegations “gobbledygook” and said it was “ridiculous” to use those claims to bolster the charge that Duran was acting under the control of Venezuela’s intelligence service. The FBI, however, has wiretap tapes that indicate Venezuelan intelligence and its senior officials were deeply involved in the transaction.

Another central figure in the trial is the man who carried the cash suitcase into Argentina: Guido Alejandro Antonini Wilson, a dual U.S.-Venezuelan citizen who is cooperating with prosecutors and who lived on Key Biscayne near Miami.

Duran and Kauffman wanted Antonini to claim the $800,000 in the suitcase was his, so it could not be traced to Venezuela, prosecutors say. The idea was to create a fake paper trial in the U.S. regarding the source of the cash.

Among the allegations: that Antonini was offered $2 million to assist in the scheme and that he and his family were threatened if he refused to help. These conversations involving Duran and Kauffmann were also captured on FBI tapes and Antonini is expected to testify in Duran’s trial.

Kauffmann and the other two men who pleaded guilty are likely to get reduced prison sentences in exchange for their cooperation. A fifth man indicted in the case, suspected Venezuelan intelligence agent Antonio Jose Canchica, was never arrested and remains at large.