PERU: Swiss Authorities Return Montesinos’ Ill-Gotten Millions

By Gustavo Capdevila Reprint | | Print |

Gustavo Capdevila

GENEVA, Aug 20 2002 (IPS) - Switzerland’s justice authorities returned to Peru 77.5 million dollars that had been deposited in its banks under the name of Vladimiro Montesinos and other former Peruvian officials who are charged with corruption and human rights crimes.

The Federal Justice Office in Bern announced Tuesday that it deposited that sum in Peru’s Banco de la Nación account at Citibank in New York.

For the second time in the last two months, the Swiss government has returned to a Latin American country the ill-gotten funds of powerful figures deposited in Switzerland’s banks.

In June, justice authorities released 114 million dollars to the Mexican courts. The money had been deposited in Swiss accounts under the name of Raúl Salinas de Gortari, brother of former president Carlos Salinas de Gortari (1988-1994) and under investigation for corruption and drug trafficking charges. Some of the accounts were in his wife’s name, Paulina Castañon.

Currently, Raúl Salinas is behind bars in Mexico serving a 27- year sentence for the assassination of his brother-in-law, José Francisco Ruiz Massieu, who was the secretary general of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which ruled Mexico from the 1930s to 2000.

The Swiss authorities staunchly defend the principle of banking privacy, one of the pillars of the European country’s economic prosperity. Foreign Relations Minister Joseph Deiss stated Monday that this principle “is non-negotiable” in the discussion of agreements with the European Union, a bloc Switzerland has not joined.

However, Switzerland has in place strict laws against money laundering and ostensibly makes an effort to prevent deposits of funds derived from criminal acts, such as corruption or drug trafficking, and more recently, those related to terrorist groups.

One corruption case under way involves a petition by Argentine judges to investigate alleged Swiss accounts belonging to former Argentine president Carlos Menem (1989-1999) and some of his cohort, suspected of illicit funds transfers.

The return of the 77.5 million dollars to Peru may mark a closure of the Swiss phase of the case against Montesinos, who served as intelligence chief under former Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori, who was elected in 1990 and fled to his ancestral home of Japan in 2000 as a wave of corruption charges hit his entire administration.

Legal authorities in Zurich carried out an investigation which found that the 49.5 million dollars in Montesinos’ accounts — frozen since November 2001 to verify the source of the funds — came from acts of corruption committed by the former spy chief.

“Since 1990, Montesinos received ‘commissions’ on arms deliveries to Peru and had this bribe money deposited in his bank accounts in Luxembourg, the United States and Switzerland,” says the Federal Justice Office.

“Montesinos received bribes for at least 32 transactions, each worth 18 percent of the purchase price,” according to the Swiss authorities’ official statement.

For the purchase of three Russian MiG combat aircraft alone, the former Peruvian official pocketed 10.9 million dollars, said investigators.

One of the other officials benefiting from the illicit dealings of Montesinos was Gen. Nicolás de Bari Hermoza Ríos, commander of the Peruvian army during Fujimori’s iron-fisted rule.

Hermoza Ríos also faces charges of misappropriating funds from the military budget.

Swiss authorities returned to Peru the 21 million dollars that were held in his name in accounts that were also frozen for investigation.

The remaining 6.5 million dollars returned to Peru were in accounts belonging to other individuals close to Montesinos.

The Federal Justice Office reports that it maintains another 33 million dollars blocked in its banks, awaiting decision on pending requests from Peru for judicial assistance in returning that sum.

Montesinos was sentenced in Peru last month to nine years and four months in prison for crimes involving the misuse of power. He faces least 65 more criminal charges as well as 140 other complaints that are pending.

Among the charges the former spy chief faces are arms smuggling, drug trafficking, serious human rights violations, murder, and the forced disappearance of individuals during the massacres perpetrated in 1991 and 1992 by a clandestine group of military personnel under his command.