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Argentina is "a mafia state," riddled by systemic corruption, where high-level impunity is the rule.
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![]() Former Argentinean president Carlos Menem with his girlfriend, the former Miss Universe Cecilia Bolocco of Chile, Las Vegas, Jan. 12, 2001. Laura Rauch Argentina and the Mafia State by Ana Simo FEBRUARY 27, 2001. It has all the ingredients of a best-selling thriller. A fearless, crusading legislator, execution-style murders at a luxury beach resort, billions in dirty money, a nosy U.S. Senate subcommittee, a country's tottering economy, drug cartels, arms dealers, bribes, and even a golf partner of former President George Bush. It's Argentina's widening money-laundering scandal, now entering its last and most convoluted chapter.
The Mafia State For the past few months, La Gorda (the Fat One), as Argentineans fondly call her, has relentlessly unearthed and exposed a complex, 10-billion dollar web of money laundering from drug and arms sales, and political corruption going back at least a decade. In the process, she has become something of a folk hero in her country. Carrió says that Argentina is "a mafia state," riddled by systemic corruption, where high-level impunity is the rule. She has accused the country's banking and financial establishment, including members of the powerful Argentinean Bank Association, with abetting this rotten system. She has also charged Argentina's Central Bank President, Pedro Pou, whom she calls a "delinquent," with covering up massive money-laundering. Fellow crusader Gustavo Gutiérrez, like Carrió a governing coalition legislator, has also fingered Pou.
When the administration of President Fernando de la Rúa did nothing about the scandal, in spite of the public clamor triggered by her revelations, Carrió did the unthinkable. She personally took her voluminous files to the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. So did legislator Gutiérrez.
Murder On The Beach Losanovsky Perel and his wife, Rosa Berta, 49, were found dead on the floor of their cabin at the exclusive Argentinean beach resort of Cariló, on February 5th. Each had taken a bullet in the back of the neck. The police said that it was "a clean and professional job" and that the killers had used a gun with a silencer, since no one in the crowded resort heard a thing. So far, there are no witnesses and no suspects. According to the Buenos Aires daily La Nación, the killers left a message on Losanovsky Perel's laptop saying that Citigroup's failure to pay bribes in Argentina was the reason for the murders. The message read, "I am a gringo who collaborates with Citibank, dead for not paying Citigroup's bribes." Police also found in the cabin an underlined newspaper clipping about legislator Carrió's anti-money-laundering crusade. Carrió's phone has been ringing off the hook with death threats since the double murder, and she has been placed under increased police protection. "We're beginning to eliminate the mafia state," a defiant Carrió told a television reporter the day after the murders.
Dirty Money
The government also asked the court to investigate Argentina's Banco República, its offshore, Bahamas-based subsidiary Federal Bank, and Mercado Abierto, a Cayman Islands-based Argentinean financial entity. All three were named in the U.S. Senate subcommittee's preliminary report, which traced a flow of drug money through Citibank into Mercado Abierto. Banco República, which collapsed in 1999 in the midst of a financial scandal, was headed by Raúl Moneta, a crony of former Argentinean President Carlos Menem. Although he has been indicted, Moneta remains free. He is "Exhibit A" for Carrió's theory of Argentinean impunity. Moneta and Citibank were partners in CEI Citicorp Holdings, an Argentinean communications group, along with Tom Hicks, Texas Rangers owner and George W. Bush presidential campaign bankroller. The court was also asked to investigate the "Juárez cartel," a Mexican drug ring that, according to Mexican Interpol officials, laundered about $25 million in Argentina using U.S. banks as conduits. On Sunday, investigative journalist Andrés Oppenheimer reported in La Nación that the Juárez Cartel had not only bought "mansions and businesses in Argentina and Uruguay" with this dirty money, but had also pumped more than a million dollars into the failed 1999 presidential campaign of Eduardo Duhalde, the candidate of Menem's Peronista party, using the New York branch of Citibank. Duhalde was defeated by current President de la Rúa, who ran on a clean government platform.
In Denial
In the meantime, the country's banking and financial establishment has predictably reacted to the growing scandal by circling the wagons. A parade of Argentinean Bank Association bigwigs, former Central Bank honchos, and the like are publicly fretting about the damage to the country's image and economy that all this laundry airing could do. They seem curiously myopic about all the good that uncovering and stomping out systemic corruption would do to Argentina's international standing, and how it could help Argentina finally become a mature, truly functioning, democratic state. A Bank Association delegation met last week with President de la Rúa to either express their concern (according to them) or to lobby for impunity for Central Bank President Pou and any other malfeasant banking biggies that may be caught in the scandal's net (if you believe the fiery legislator Carrió).
Tipping the Apple Cart When the scandal broke, the government had just reported that the economy was beginning to emerge from a two-year recession, an assessment not shared by all analysts. Last December, Argentina was the recipient of a lavish $40 billion IMF bailout. As usual in these cases, it was prompted by fears that an Argentinean debt default would drag down the rest of the Latin American economies. Argentina is the third largest economy in the region, after Mexico and Brazil. Argentineans are now holding their collective breath in anticipation of the full report on global money laundering, which will be released this Wednesday by the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. The report is widely expected to "name names," and specifically detail Moneta's and Citibank's involvement. More information will come out during three days of hearings beginning on Thursday, in which executives of Citibank, J.P. Morgan Chase and Bank of America will appear before the Subcommittee. Legislator Carrió, who recently found that all her phones had been tapped by SIDA, the Argentinean intelligence services, summed up the situation: "This is the last opportunity that our country has to build a true republic. If we do not accomplish it now, we will be governed indefinitely by mafias." Related links: For the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations' "preliminary inquiry" report, Correspondent Banking: A Gateway for Money Laundering. In PDF. For the CIA Factbook overview of Argentina.
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