Chigusa Turner, 32, had been lured to Caracas in June last year by her occupational therapist husband Ray, 29, alleged David Farrer QC, prosecuting.
Mr Turner then strangled her, wrapped her in black plastic binliners he had packed from their home in Willesden, north-west London, hid her in a suitcase and dumped her in a wood, Mr Farrer said.
Turner and his alleged accomplice, Danny Draghici, 32, then returned to London believing the body would never be found or identified.
But Venezuelan police found it within a week and it was eventually identified from dental records after Mrs Turner's family launched a search for her, said Mr Farrer.
Meanwhile, Mr Turner, who also worked as a showbiz bodyguard, had installed his Korean mistress in the flat and was withdrawing money from his wife's bank accounts.
In August, before the body was linked to Britain, police arrested Mr Turner, initially for stealing from the accounts but later rearrested him for suspected murder.
Mr Farrer said: "Police searched the ground-floor flat, digging in the garden, pulling up floors. Obviously, they were contemplating the possibility that she was dead and buried at their home in London." But the police were, in fact, "4,000 miles wide of the mark", he said.
Mr Turner pleaded not guilty to murdering his Japanese-born wife by strangling her shortly after she arrived in Caracas on June 3, and to conspiracy to murder - a charge also denied by his Romanian friend, Mr Draghici.
Both men had travelled to Venezuela together and had been jointly involved in the killing, Mr Farrer said.
After their arrests, they blamed each other for the death.
Mr Draghici, of Crawley, West Sussex, said Mr Turner had returned from the airport claiming that his wife had never arrived.
Mr Turner told officers "an utterly bizarre" story in which he claimed he had been beaten up by Venezuelan police, robbed at gunpoint and returned to the Hilton hotel in Caracas to find Mr Draghici with his wife's blood-covered body.
Mr Farrer said Mrs Turner had not been seen after she arrived at the airport.
Mr Turner had given various explanations for her not returning home, he said, and had forged her signature on a resignation letter to the Japanese Tourist Board where she worked.
But the pair appeared not to have allowed for the curiosity and suspicion that her absence aroused in her family and friends, he said.
The woman's father and brother travelled to London and contacted police after finding Mr Turner's mistress, Nak Sim-choi, in the flat.
The case continues.
