Oil Supply to
Continue
The Government of Venezuela will continue supplying Costa Rica with oil, according to sources in Caracas.
The news came after recent accusations by the President of Venezuela, lieutenant colonel Hugo Chavez, of an alleged conspiracy staged in Costa Rica against his government.
Venezuela supplies 34.54 percent of the oil Costa Rica uses, and the threat to discontinue shipments came after Chavez claimed that the former leader of the federation of Venezuelan labor unions, Carlos Ortega, a political refugee in Costa Rica, was staging actions against his government.
The Government of Costa Rica asserted that it will investigate Ortega's activities here, to determine whether or not he has failed to comply with his duties as a political
refugee.
Chance to Lower
Devaluation
Inflation, lower than expected is providing the Central Bank of Costa Rica with a chance to lower the rate of devaluation.
Inflation in October was 1.17 percent, taking the overall figure so far this year to 6.99 percent
- it was 8.91 percent in October last year - the lowest since 1993.
The data does not show a drop in prices, but rather that the average increase is lower.
According to economist Luis Liberman, the fact that inflation is under the 10 percent expected by the Central Bank, allows this institution to lower the rhythm of devaluation, which now stands at an annual 16 percent average.
Tourism is
Recovering
The arrival of tourists in Costa Rica
- by air, that accounts for 72 percent of all the arrivals of
visitors - is close to reaching the levels it had before September 11, 2001.
In the first five months in 2001, 387,000 tourists arrived by air. In the same period in 2002, the figure was 360,000, but in the first five months this year the arrivals were 382,000.
Minister of Tourism Rodrigo Castro pointed out the fact that the arrival of European visitors increased from 55,000 to 64,000
- 17 percent - in the period analyzed.
The figure for the U.S. - the source of 64 percent of tourists for Costa Rica - went from 185,000 to
202,000 - a 9.3 percent increase.
On the other hand, there was a marked decrease in arrivals from South America, particularly from Colombia, whose citizens are now required a visa to enter Costa Rica.
For Accused
Collaborator, Stay in Costa Rica May be Ending Soon
Costa Rican authorities are awaiting the arrival of an extradition request for an accused Nazi collaborator who was indicted on war crimes charges this week.
Bohdan Koziy, a Ukrainian national who has lived in Costa Rica since 1987, was indicted this week by a court in Katowice, Poland, at the request of prosecutor Ewa Koj, of Warsaw’s Institute of National Memory, on charges that as a Nazi collaborator he killed a family and a young child.
Officials at the Polish Embassy here said the formal extradition request for Koziy, 81, should be presented in the next two or three weeks, but Costa Rica’s public security minister, Rogelio Ramos, said the arrest order from Poland already has been entered in the International Police Database, known as Interpol.
In the past, Koziy has rejected the charges against him. But he has refused to speak to foreign reporters since being discovered in Costa Rica and has not spoken to local reporters since the late 1980s.
Koziy’s 18-year residence here has been a thorn in the side of an otherwise successful social integration for Costa Rica’s small Jewish
community, which is mainly of Polish descent, and for years has hoped to see Koziy expelled.
By now, however, the situation has dragged on for so long that community leaders appear more subdued than jubilant at the news from Poland.
There are doubts about Koziy’s exact location in
Costa Rica. By all accounts, he has moved out of his
long-time home.
Privately, public security officials insist they know where to find Koziy, though they have not publicly responded to local media reports that he has gone missing.
There are no records of Koziy’s death or any indication he has left the country. No country is known to have issued him a passport since his denaturalization by the United States in 1982.
Koziy has been in Costa Rica as a dependent of his wife, who became a legal resident after the couple arrived from the United States. That status allows him to stay — but not enter or leave the country — without a passport.
Koziy long has shown an ability to avoid detection. After World War II, he immigrated to the United States and gained citizenship under a presumed name. It was not until the early 1980´s, by which time he owned a motel in Florida, that his true identity was revealed by Nazi hunters.
The U.S. Justice Department obtained a court order to deport Koziy in 1984, but he fled the country.
After moving here, Koziy hoped to live a quiet life in an upper-middle-class neighborhood in the hills overlooking Costa Rica’s picturesque Central Valley.
However, in 1987 he faced extradition to the Soviet Union to face charges that he helped the Nazi occupation of territories that were part of pre-war Poland and now fall within Ukraine.
Koziy would have been extradited, but then-President Oscar Arias, the 1987 Nobel Peace Prize winner, blocked it by playing on local anti-Communist sentiment. Arias had been under intense pressure from the powerful Catholic archbishop, Roman Arrieta.
After that, Koziy’s stay in Costa Rica was tranquil until 1994, when the World Jewish Congress launched a campaign to have him expelled.
The country rebuffed those efforts until 2000, when Ramos ordered Koziy’s expulsion. Until now that has been a largely symbolic step, since Costa Rica can’t expel Koziy unless another country is willing to take him.
Koziy is believed to be the only war criminal to have made his way to Costa Rica, a country that declared war on Nazi Germany a day before the United States did, and which long has been an ally of Israel.
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