LATIN AMERICA: US Arrives Late in Anti-Corruption Fight

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Sep 6 2001 (IPS) - The United States should hand over to Latin America the information it has on corruption before the implicated officials leave their posts, said Argentine legislator Elisa Carrió, who opinion polls indicate is the politician with the highest approval rating in the country.

Carrió, chairwoman of the Chamber of Deputies investigative commission on money laundering, said Wednesday that, just as former president Carlos Menem (1989-1999) has been indicted and is under house arrest, Economy minister Domingo Cavallo should have to account for his questionable actions before Argentina’s legal authorities.

The lawmaker pointed out that Menem’s arrest was the result of his role in the illegal sale of weapons to Croatia and Ecuador, and suggested that Cavallo may have benefited personally from the exchange of foreign debt titles he organised in late May of this year.

Polling firms report that Carrió heads the list of Argentine politicians when it comes to public image, and today would have the best chance of winning a presidential election.

But the deputy decided against running for senator in October’s legislative elections, saying she wanted to preserve the independence of the parliamentary anti-corruption investigation she is heading in the lower house.

Earlier this year, Carrió abandoned the ranks of the Radical Civic Union, the party of President Fernando de la Rúa, and created the coalition known as the Alternative for a Republic of Equals.

In spite of her popularity, the figure of Carrió is cause for controversy in Argentina. Menem stated, from the mansion where he is serving house arrest, that the legislator “exercises a kind of mythomania” and “that one should not lie so much, or so treacherously.”

Meanwhile, Guillermo Francos, adviser to Cavallo, said the lawmaker received and disseminated “false information” about a supposed bank account in the Bahamas that Cavallo reportedly shares with US banker David Mulford. Francos warned that “if Carrió does not rectify her comments, we will file a legal complaint.”

But the lawmaker is striding forward with her accusations of corruption.

“How much would the United States have helped Peru if it had sent information it had about (former Peruvian intelligence chief) Montesinos?” Carrió wondered aloud during a press conference here Wednesday.

She was referring to the fact that Washington waited to provide assistance until the capture of Montesinos in Venezuela last June. The former spy chief had fled Peru shortly before that country’s president, Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000), was removed from office last November when parliament decided he was unfit to govern.

Montesinos was thrown out of the Peruvian army in 1977 when it was discovered he was passing information to the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). He maintained his CIA ties during the time he served as Fujimori’s principal adviser and spy chief.

He is now being held in a military prison in Peru and faces legal charges in 52 cases, ranging from illicit enrichment and money laundering to drugs and weapons trafficking to assassination.

Peru’s President Alejandro Toledo has requested assistance from US President George W. Bush in digging up information on “the dark relationship between the CIA and Montesinos.”

Argentina’s Carrió, meanwhile, maintains that “if the United States truly wanted to help Latin America, it would hand over information related to cases of corruption before, not after, the officials (involved) leave their posts.”

The parliamentary commission Carrió heads was created to investigate information revealed this year by a committee of the US Senate, the result of pressure from the Argentine deputy herself, who for a year and a half had provided data to the US lawmakers.

The documents show connections between politicians, business leaders, bankers and drug traffickers. Many of the files prove that part of the money feeding electoral campaigns in Argentina came from drugs and arms trafficking, according to Carrió.

She has asserted publicly that the bombings at the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires (1992) and at the AMIA (1994), the main Jewish social institution here, may be related to the criminal organisations’ contributions to electoral campaigns and to the government’s failure to keep promises.

Eighty percent of the campaign that put Menem in the presidency was financed by Saudi banker Gaith Pharaon, accused of money laundering related to the drug trade and of illegal arms sales, according to documents provided to Carrió’s investigative commission by the US Senate.

Carrió said Wednesday that Washington is using the information it possesses “to blackmail (Latin American) governments,” and that it waits for the corrupt administrations to fall before releasing the data it holds.

One proof of her hypothesis, she said, is the indictment and arrest of former president Menem, who, in Carrió’s opinion, directed the construction of a “mafia state” in Argentina.

The Argentine deputy asserted that then-secretary general to the president, Alberto Kohan, “was Menem’s Montesinos.” But in this case, she lamented, the former official has so far failed to make his legal statement on the arms trafficking charges, the same ones for which Menem was indicted.

The parliamentary commission will have to wait some time before it can obtain information that clearly outlines minister Cavallo’s complicity with US bankers who made huge profits on the debt swap operation in Argentina last May, predicted the deputy.

But she assured that a report now in the hands of the Comptroller General of the Nation reveals irregularities committed during that process, which is currently under judicial inquiry.

“They do not hand over documents on officials who are in power, but I saw it on the computer screen. It is a document that shows funds transfers,” she said in reference to the Bahamas bank account Cavallo allegedly holds with Mulford, who she asserts is an illegal beneficiary of the debt swap.

Carrió believes the current process of globalisation should serve to increase transparency in public affairs and governance. In this sense, she sees controlling corruption as one way to fight poverty.

The popular lawmaker’s party will have candidates running for office in the October elections, though she will not be among them, choosing to keep her seat as deputy.

Carrió broke away from the governing coalition and from De la Rúa, who she says went from being a “hostage to an accomplice” of the dirty dealings she is denouncing in her investigations.