CORRUPTION-ARGENTINA: Probe into Senate Bribery Scandal Finally Moving Forward

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, May 23 2005 (IPS) - Five years have passed since a major scandal erupted in Argentina over the alleged payment of huge bribes to senators by cabinet members. But after three different judges failed to make any headway, a fourth is now forging ahead.

Judge Daniel Rafecas’ determination could lead, for the first time, to the prosecution of one of the former government ministers implicated in the scandal.

"For the senators, I have Banelco (a network of automatic teller machines)," then labour minister Alberto Flamarique told a group of trade unionists in January 2000. He was alluding to a plan to bribe legislators who were reluctant to vote in favour of controversial changes to the country’s labour legislation.

Flamarique is to testify this week before a federal judge, and five senators and several Secretariat of State Intelligence (SIDE) agents are to do so within the next few days.

Flamarique’s bribery plan reportedly went into effect in April 2000, during the congressional debate on the reforms of the country’s labour legislation, under the administration of Fernando de la Rúa (1999-2001).

Eleven senators – from the then-ruling centre-left FREPASO alliance and the Justicialista (Peronist) Party which is in government today – allegedly accepted a total of 6.5 million dollars in cash from SIDE accounts.

When anonymous reports of the bribes came out, they triggered the worst political shake-up to hit the de la Rúa administration until the president was forced to resign in late 2001 by widespread protests and a financial meltdown.

His vice-president, Carlos Alvarez, who was also president of the Senate, resigned after complaining that de la Rúa had refused to back his determination to investigate the payments.

Flamarique, SIDE chief Fernando de Santibáñez, de la Rúa’s cabinet chief Rodolfo Terragno and his justice minister Ricardo Gil Lavedra also handed in their resignations.

Terragno had purportedly refused to back Santibáñez’s request to secretly divert budget funds to SIDE.

Gil Lavedra was replaced by Jorge de la Rúa, the president’s brother, shortly after the legal investigation got underway.

The judges that handled the case up to now made no progress. However, there is clear evidence that the funds in question left SIDE coffers during that time period, destination unknown, as indicated by the comptroller-general’s office, which at the time was under the control of current Foreign Minister Rafael Bielsa.

The first judge to begin investigating was Carlos Liporaci, who within just four months dismissed the charges against all of the implicated officials on grounds of lack of merit. Two months later he himself resigned, when he was accused of purchasing a house worth more than one million dollars, without being able to justify the origins of the money.

His resignation saved him from impeachment by Congress.

A federal appeals court then upheld the lack of merit ruling and the investigation stalled.

The next judge to preside over the case, Gabriel Cavallo, withdrew six months later when he was recommended for a promotion by then justice minister Jorge de la Rúa. The Senate approved the judge’s designation to his new post with the votes of the lawmakers who were under investigation. He remains in that post today.

Journalist Juan Gasparini, who wrote a book on the scandal, "La Injusticia Federal" (Federal Injustice), told IPS that in his investigation he found evidence of "a cover-up pact between president de la Rúa, SIDE chief Santibáñez and Judge Cavallo to carry out what was an investigation in appearance only."

According to the writer, Cavallo made no real efforts to force SIDE to hand over the records and accounts showing what happened to the funds that allegedly ended up in the pockets of 11 senators.

Nor were any advances made in the probe into the fortunes accumulated by legislators during their time in the Senate, added Gasparini, who investigated SIDE’s role in the scandal as well as the wealth of the senators accused of receiving bribes.

The third judge to handle the case, Rodolfo Canicoba Corral, made no headway either despite the fact that a "repentant" witness, Mario Pontaquarto – secretary to one of the implicated senators, José Genoud – agreed to testify.

Pontaquarto confessed that just before Congress began to debate the labour reforms in parliament, he picked up five million dollars from SIDE headquarters, which he carried in his car and hid in his apartment until the changes to the labour laws were approved eight days later.

At that time, he said, Genoud gave him the order to take four million dollars to the home of opposition Senator Emilio Cantarero and 700,000 dollars to his own office, to be split between Genoud himself and then labour minister Flamarique.

Pontaquarto also held onto a list from Cantarero with the names of other senators who were to receive part of the cash. A few days later, Cantarero admitted to a reporter from the local newspaper La Nación that he had accepted bribes.

The La Nación journalist kept the name of the source quiet until it was reported elsewhere that her informant was Cantarero. But the senator denied everything before Judge Canicoba Corral, who ruled that Pontaquarto’s testimony provided grounds for going ahead with the prosecution of the 11 senators on charges of taking bribes.

The appeals court, however, did not uphold that ruling, and in July 2004 decided that more evidence was needed in order to prosecute.

Judge Rafecas took over the case in December 2004. After gathering more testimony and compiling additional evidence, he has now summoned the accused to appear in court, as well as other suspects who had never before been ordered to testify, like Flamarique.

Charges of bribery are difficult to prove. The senators suspected of receiving the payments accumulated great wealth during their years in the legislature, but in this particular case the prosecutors must specifically demonstrate how they used the bribery money.

Nevertheless, Gasparini, who continues to follow the case closely, believes that progress will finally be made by Judge Rafecas, thanks to new evidence and a presidential decree allowing SIDE agents to testify.

The journalist also said former president de la Rúa must have been aware of what was going on in SIDE. Pontaquarto, for example, said Flamarique and several of the implicated senators took part in a meeting in the president’s office just before the bribes were paid.

But so far, de la Rúa has not been directly implicated. The former president has repeatedly stated that the bribery scandal was a "big lie" concocted by the media in an attempt to get him removed from office.