ARGENTINA: Lawmaker Fears for Her Life after Investment Banker’s Murder

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Feb 8 2001 (IPS) - An Argentine legislator who collaborated with a U.S. Senate probe into money laundering has sought protection for herself and her family after a double murder of an investment banker and his wife.

Investment banker Mariano Perel and his wife Rosa Berta were shot and killed Sunday while relaxing in a cottage in the seaside resort town of Carilo in the province of Buenos Aires. Found near their bodies was a message reading, in English, “I am a gringo who collaborates with Citibank, dead for not paying Citigroup’s bribes.”

Also found was a newspaper article that had been circled, in which parliamentary Deputy Elisa Carrió, of the co-governing Radical Civic Union party, had made statements on the alleged participation of local banks in money laundering operations.

Carrió, who belongs to the same party as President Fernando de la Rúa, and her fellow lawmaker Gustavo Gutiérrez cooperated last year with the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which launched a probe into U.S. banks.

The report ‘Correspondent Banking: A Gateway for Money Laundering’, released Monday by the Minority Staff of the Subcommittee, stated that U.S. banks had facilitated money- laundering by setting up so-called “correspondent accounts” for clients of foreign banks, some of which were mere shell companies created for drug-traffickers and others to hide ill-gotten profits.

“Inattention and disinterest by U.S. banks in screening the foreign banks they take in as clients have allowed rogue foreign banks and their criminal clients to carry on money laundering and other criminal activity in the United States,” said Senator Carl Levin, whose staff wrote the report.

The report estimated that between 500 billion dollars and one trillion dollars of “dirty money” moves through the world’s banking system each year. and that roughly half of that total was deposited at one time or another in U.S. banks.

Levin said two Argentine banks – the now-defunct Banco República and the Mercado Abierto – had a correspondent relationship with Citibank, through which drug money and bribes may have been laundered.

The Subcommittee produced a report back in 1999 detailing the failure of Citibank’s owner, Citigroup – the largest U.S. bank – to exercise “due diligence” over foreign accounts in its “private banking” department.

It found that tens of millions of dollars apparently obtained by foreign leaders and their family members through bribery and other illegal practices had been held in private bank accounts, which are managed by special Citigroup officers who act as the client’s “private banker”.

Perel was Latin America director for Antfactory, a London-based venture capital firm that funds new-media and Internet start-ups, which has been operating for five months in Argentina and has subregional offices in Mexico and Brazil.

Antfactory Latin America is a 50-50 joint venture between Antfactory and a division of Citigroup.

Antfactory’s announcement last July that it had 100 million dollars to invest in Latin America’s Internet industry was published in a variety of specialised financial newspapers, but no actual disbursement of funds was ever reported.

The links between the U.S. Senate investigation and Perel’s murder are Citigroup and Deputy Carrió, who had to cancel her summer vacation plans in January when someone apparently tried to break into her home.

Carrió, who suspected that there was some kind of threat behind the apparent robbery attempts, asked authorities to provide special protection for her and her families after Perel and his wife were killed.

The U.S. Senate Subcommittee found that Citibank had set up correspondent accounts in the United States for the Banco República, which closed its doors in April 1999, and for the Mercado Abierto.

According to the Subcommittee report, the Banco República had an offshore branch known as the Banco Federal, and Mercado Abierto was a mere shell company.

The legislators said that through such correspondent relationships, money coming from drugs and bribes in Argentina was laundered.

The Subcommittee’s final report is set for release in early March, said Levin, who added that witnesses would probably be called to testify on Citibank’s alleged involvement in suspicious activity.

Raúl Moneta, the former owner of the Banco República, formed a joint venture with Citibank, the Citicorp Equity Investment, which acquired telephone companies and media entities. Moneta is currently being prosecuted on charges of illicit association in connection with the irregular closure of another bank.

Perel, meanwhile, had a long career in consulting and banking. In 1996 he served on the board of directors of the Mercurio bank, which was accused of transferring funds to the United States for a group involved in large-scale contraband. Although Perel was cleared in that case, the prosecuting judge who investigated it described him Tuesday as “a very mysterious person.”