POLITICS-ARGENTINA: Cavallo’s Arms Indictment May Drag in Menem

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Apr 10 2002 (IPS) - Argentine justice authorities indicted the already-detained former Economy minister, Domingo Cavallo, Wednesday, for his alleged role in illegal arms sales, and judges are once again turning their gaze to former president Carlos Menem for the same case.

Cavallo was charged as a necessary participant in the “aggravated contraband” of weapons, purportedly committed in the early 1990s when he served as Economy minister for then-president Carlos Menem (1989-1999).

In 2001, Cavallo was returned to the minister’s seat by Menem’s successor, Fernando de la Rúa, though both resigned in December amidst massive protests of strict new economic measures.

The indictment confirms the detention of Cavallo, held in the compounds of the Gendarmerie since last week as a preventive measure. If found guilty of the arms smuggling charges, he faces four to 12 years in prison.

The case involves weapons sales in the first half of the 1990s to Croatia, subject at the time to an international arms embargo, and to Ecuador, which was engaged in a border conflict with Peru. Argentina was a guarantor of the peace treaty between the two neighbours.

Judge Julio Speroni, who unexpectedly ordered Cavallo’s arrest Apr 3 after a brief deposition, says he now has sufficient evidence to issue the indictment, confirm the continued prison stay of the former minister and impose an embargo on his assets worth some 330,000 dollars.

The indictment came almost as much of a surprise as Cavallo’s Apr 3 arrest, as Speroni had until early next week to issue such an order.

Meanwhile, legislators of the party headed by Cavallo, ‘Acción por la República’, are pushing through parliament a request for an explanation from the secretary of intelligence, Carlos Soria. The news media have reported that Soria had pressed the justice authorities to arrest the former minister.

Soria reportedly met with judges in January to demand, on behalf of the Eduardo Duhalde government, the arrest of two bank officials for their alleged role in the nation’s financial crisis, and of Cavallo for any of the legal causes in which he could be involved.

Cavallo’s name comes up in several criminal cases. In addition to arms trafficking, he is under investigation for the negotiation of a foreign debt bond exchange that took place in 2001, when he served as De la Rúa’s Economy minister.

His lawyers have announced that they will appeal the indictment. But there appear to be few chances that the court involved, the National Chamber of Appeals for Economic Crimes, will change the order, as it is the same tribunal that ordered judge Speroni on Monday to also study former president Menem’s role in the arms smuggling case.

Menem was arrested last year, on charges parallel to those Speroni is pursuing, for “illicit association” for the purpose of trafficking weapons to Ecuador and Croatia. The justice authorities suspected that Menem was the head of the association and ordered him to be placed under house arrest, an alternative to prison granted those over age 70.

But after his arrest, which lasted from June to December 2001, the Supreme Court of Justice ruled that there was insufficient proof that the illicit association existed. The court ordered the former president released, a ruling that continues to be the subject of criticism in Argentina’s legal circles.

In the wake of Cavallo’s arrest, the Chamber of Appeals for Economic Crimes ruled that Menem should be subpoenaed for a deposition on the crime of aggravated contraband – the same as Cavallo -, upon annulling the “lack of merit” that Speroni issued in Menem’s benefit.

Lack of merit is a ruling that is halfway between a stay in the proceedings – according to which the one under investigation has no responsibility in the case – and an indictment.

Menem charged that the annulment of the lack of merit ruling is the result of the “hate” he says certain judges feel towards him, and also of the “political persecution” he alluded was the work of President Duhalde, his rival within the ‘Justicialista’ (Peronist) Party, to which both men belong.

On Monday, the court also called on judge Speroni to investigate former officials of the Menem government who were arrested and indicted for the same illicit association in the arms trafficking case as the former president, and released after the Supreme Court ruling.

Among these suspects are the former Defence minister Antonio Erman González and Menem’s former adviser and brother-in-law, Emir Yoma.

González and Yoma were held in special prisons for government officials, police and judges in order to protect them from attacks from inmates in the general prison population.

The first reports of arms trafficking came in 1995, alerting to the shipment of 8,000 FAL rifles and 75 tons of munitions that, according to the orders signed by Menem and his ministers, were headed to Venezuela. In fact, the weaponry went to Ecuador.

It was then found that 6,500 tons of weapons were sent to Croatia during the wars of secession in the former Yugoslavia, from 1991 to 1995, a time when a United Nations embargo on arms was in force for all parties to the conflict.

The shipment orders in the Croatia case falsely indicated that Panama was the destination of the weapons.