CORRUPTION-CHILE: Pinochet’s Wife and Son in the Dock Now Too

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Gustavo González

SANTIAGO, Aug 10 2005 (IPS) - Prosecuting Judge Sergio Muñoz, who is investigating former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet’s secret bank accounts, ordered the arrest of his wife Lucía Hiriart and his youngest son Marco Antonio on charges of tax fraud.

Hiriart, 81, was put under guard at the military hospital, where she had checked in a few minutes after she was indicted by the judge, complaining of moderately high blood pressure.

Marco Antonio Pinochet was taken to the Capuchinos jail in central Santiago, which is used as a temporary holding centre for members of the political and business elite who run into legal problems.

Both of them could be set free Thursday after the Supreme Court approves Judge Muñoz’s decision to grant them a temporary release on payment of a 3,800 dollar bail.

Hiriart and her son are implicated in the amassing of a Pinochet family fortune that could amount to more than 18 million dollars, distributed in a number of bank accounts in the United States, Europe, the Cayman Islands and Panama.

The "Riggs case", as the tax fraud and illicit enrichment charges against Pinochet are known, began to emerge in August 2004, when a U.S. Senate committee uncovered secret accounts in the Washington-based Riggs Bank under pseudonyms based on different versions of the names of the man who ruled Chile with an iron fist from 1973 to 1990.

On Jun. 7, the Santiago appeals court stripped Pinochet of the immunity from prosecution he enjoys as a former president in connection with the case, to allow Judge Muñoz to investigate the secret accounts.

The former dictator, who turns 90 on Nov. 15, has faced charges in three different human rights cases since 2000. But the courts have ruled that he is mentally unfit to stand trial, based on a controversial diagnosis of senility.

"Augusto Pinochet was not only involved in human rights violations, but he also seized public money illegally," said Viviana Díaz, vice-president of the Group of Families of the Detained-Disappeared, in response to the arrests of the former dictator’s wife and youngest son.

According to a 1991 truth commission report, 3,000 people were killed or "disappeared" by the dictatorship. Tens of thousands were also tortured.

The activist commented to IPS that it has been proven that Pinochet’s family took part in the illicit enrichment.

But at the same time, she lamented what she described as a "lack of rigour" on the part of the courts in prosecuting the former dictator for crimes against humanity.

Pinochet visited his wife at the military hospital, but he declined to make any comments to the press.

The couple’s oldest son, Augusto Pinochet Hiriart, said his mother was "in very poor health," and that "we are just starting to absorb the impact of her arrest."

In March 2005, Muñoz established, after questioning Pinochet’s wife, that she had failed to declare an estimated 2.35 million dollars in income, which gave rise to charges of tax evasion.

Something similar occurred in the case of Marco Antonio, whose name is on numerous overseas bank accounts being jointly investigated by Chile and the governments of several other countries, including Spain and the United States.

Pablo Rodríguez, the Pinochet family lawyer, said the judge’s resolution was expected, but that Muñoz "made a tremendous mistake" because Lucía Hiriart "had nothing to do with the developments that are being investigated."

Rodríguez said that in 1999, Hiriart arranged a separation of assets in her marriage. "Since then, she has only very marginally participated in the business of General Pinochet, as his wife," he added.

But Carmen Hertz, one of the lawyers for the plaintiffs in the "Riggs case", said that the arrests of Hiriart and her youngest son "are in full keeping with the law."

"We believe these prosecutions help to advance the investigations of the illegal dealings organised by Pinochet and those close to him, as well as third parties, to conceal funds, transfer them secretly, and basically launder ill-gotten funds," said Hertz.

President Ricardo Lagos remarked that Muñoz’s ruling merely indicated that a prosecution had begun, and said that "no one should reach hasty conclusions in this or in any other case."

The president appeared to be alluding to the trial of Matías de la Fuente, a former close associate of the Lagos administration who is also accused of committing tax fraud in the Ministry of Public Works when Lagos headed that ministry under the government of Eduardo Frei (1994-2000).

"The only thing I would like to say is that in Chile all citizens are equal, no one is above the law, and (the arrest of Hiriart and her son) is a decision by a representative of the Chilean justice system," said Lagos.

Hiriart and Pinochet were married in 1943 and had three sons and two daughters.

Hiriart is widely understood to have a strong influence over her husband, and played a prominent role during the dictatorship as president of the state-sanctioned "Mothers Centres", one of the de facto regime’s support structures.

"It was Lucía who pushed Pinochet to join those staging the coup d’etat on Sept. 11, 1973, when he continued to swear his loyalty to (socialist) president Salvador Allende (1971-1973). With her strong personality, it would not be surprising to find that she also had an influence over the ex-dictator’s illicit amassing of wealth," an analyst who requested that his name not be used commented to IPS.