POLITICS-ARGENTINA: Arms Trafficking Case Propelled by New Testimony

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Apr 10 2001 (IPS) - An arms trafficking case underway in Argentina’s courts received a boost from a former official’s new testimony, which points to ministers, a relative of former president Carlos Menem and a former US ambassador, all alleged to have been involved in an illicit weapons deal with Ecuador and Croatia.

Judge Jorge Urso, in charge of the investigations, ordered further police raids Monday, following the declarations made by Luis Sarlenga, who had served as controller of a government-run military manufacturing firm. Sarlenga stated that business executive Emir Yoma was involved in the illegal deals.

Yoma, the brother of Menem’s former wife Zulema, was arrested over the weekend after the judge ruled that there was enough evidence to charge him as the alleged chief of an arms smuggling ring.

Meanwhile, Menem attempted to distance himself from the case, stressing that Yoma had not held any official post during his presidency (1989-1999), though it is widely acknowledged in Argentina that Yoma and Menem have had close ties for years and that the businessman has been under investigation for various financial irregularities.

Yoma served as an adviser to the Menem government, but was forced to step down in 1991 after the US embassy in Buenos Aires accused him of attempting to extort the US-based slaughterhouse, Swift.

He was also the subject of investigations for gold smuggling, fraud against the state, and drug-related money laundering, for which he was prosecuted alongside another of his sisters, Amira Yoma.

The government’s anti-corruption office accused him of having pocketed the repayments on exports in the 1990s without the state- run Banco Nación verifying the corresponding paperwork.

Yoma currently owes the banking institution nearly 200 million dollars.

The legal inquiries into the illegal trafficking of 6,500 tons of arms and munitions to Ecuador and Croatia have been going on for more than six years.

Several shipments that were reportedly delivered to Venezuela and Panama in 1995, ended up in Ecuador, which was engaged in a border war with Peru at the time, and in Croatia, then caught up in the Balkans war.

Argentina had been prohibited from selling arms to Ecuador because Buenos Aires had served as a guarantor, along with Brazil, Chile and the United States, of the 1945 Rio de Janeiro Protocol for negotiating peace between Quito and Lima.

Croatia, meanwhile, was under a United Nations-imposed arms embargo that applied to all countries that had been part of the former Yugoslavia.

On Monday, attorney Ricardo Monner Sans asked judge Urso, for the fifth time since the case began, to question Menem and the current minister of Economy, Domingo Cavallo, who held the same post until early 1996.

Already prosecuted under these investigations were former ministers of Defence, Antonio Ermán González and Oscar Camilión – the latter resigned when justice authorities subpoenaed him – and former foreign minister Guido Di Tella.

A higher court ruled last Wednesday to uphold the proceedings against the former ministers and against former army chief, Gen. Martín Balza.

The court decision mentions that it is “suspicious that the events under investigation could have occurred without the consent of the highest authorities with jurisdiction over the matter.”

The judges thus alluded to other ministers and former president Menem, while investigations began regarding the crime of illicit association with these events.

The court called for further investigations of Syrian citizen Monser Al Kassar, of the money trail left by the illegal commissions paid, and of illicit association with Sarlenga, the former controller of the arms manufacturing entity that in that era belonged to the armed forces.

Sarlenga, who has been in prison for the last two on smuggling charges, made a six-hour statement before judge Urso last Friday.

Justice authorities were already aware that weapons had been shipped out of Argentina, protected by six decrees bearing the signatures of Menem and of members of his Cabinet.

In his testimony Friday, Sarlenga said that Yoma had asked him to take care of the arms sale in order to provide money to “the party,” apparently in reference to Menem’s ‘Justicialista’ (Peronist) Party. He also said that Yoma had assured him that the sales to Croatia were taking place at the request of the United States.

The former official maintained that Peronist senator Eduardo Vaca, now deceased, had told him that the US ambassador in Buenos Aires at the time, James Cheek, had obtained authorisation for aircraft from Fine Air airlines to land without a problem and transfer shipments at Ezeiza international import, located in the outskirts of the Argentine capital.

As a result of the declarations, Monner Sans said over the weekend that not only is it essential to inquire into the political responsibilities of the government at the time, but also that investigators must track the steps of businessman Al Kassar and clarify Washington’s responsibility in the events.

Cheek denied Sunday that he had played any role in the arms deal, and only acknowledged that he had received a visit from the owners of Fine Air.

Argentine justice authorities are looking into the existence of an account belonging to a firm known as Daforel in a US bank.

US officials have six times evaded requests to provide information about the company holding the bank account, which investigators suspect is really Yoma.

Sarlenga stated that he paid a commission to an intermediary, though it was in fact, he claims, destined for Yoma, totalling 400,000 dollars. The money was deposited in an account of Daforel, which legal documents indicate is based in Uruguay, but is considered a ghost company.

Camilión had been “reticent” to approve the operation, and Di Tella had delayed in signing, first consulting with several other officials, admitted Sarlenga, but in the end both put their signature on the presidential decrees.