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CORRUPTION-ARGENTINA:
Former Officials
Padded Pockets with Impunity
Marcela
Valente
BUENOS AIRES, (IPS) -
Former Argentine government
ministers, lawmakers and judges
who benefited from hundreds of
millions of dollars in graft
payments throughout the 1990s
could be punished by little more
than a slap on the wrist if the
current administration refuses
to revoke the ”secret laws” that
permitted this colossal
corruption.
The practice of paying
”supplementary wages” to
government officials was an open
secret during the administration
of Carlos Menem (1989-1999).
When the former president left
office, isolated accounts came
to light through testimony heard
in a number of different trials.
But in recent weeks, the
situation has taken on the
proportions of a major scandal.
The accusations point to former
high-ranking officials from the
executive, legislative and
judicial branches in Argentina.
A federal court is now
investigating the alleged
existence of a mechanism through
which the funds set aside by
virtue of secret laws meant to
serve intelligence and security
purposes were in fact used to
pad the pockets of officials and
finance other illegal
operations.
The court has summoned former
ministers Domingo Cavallo,
(Economy), Oscar Camilión (Defence)
and Raúl Granillo Ocampo
(Justice) to testify between May
17 and 20, along with a number
of other officials believed to
be responsible for these
financial manoeuvres.
Between 1991 and 1999, the Menem
administration handed out 466
million dollars in secret
payments to high-level
officials, according to a report
commissioned by the Attorney
General's Office and carried out
by corporate fraud expert
Alfredo Popritkin.
But Popritkin also noted that
the amounts involved could be
much higher.
The current administration of
President Néstor Kirchner has
expressed outrage over the
corruption scandal, but has
nonetheless been reticent in
seeking the revocation of the
laws that allowed this graft to
take place, or to publicise
their contents.
Kirchner, who represents a
centre-left faction of the
Justicialista (Peronist) Party
to which Menem also belonged,
has merely pledged that his own
government will never engage in
the practice of secret payments
to officials.
Nor are Justicialista Party
legislators interested in
repealing the secret laws.
For his part, Interior Minister
Aníbal Fernández has openly
spoken out against overturning
the secret laws as a consequence
of the scandal, and added that
even if the legislation is
reformed, some degree of secrecy
must be maintained for security
and defence expenditures.
Fernández also denied that there
are officials who benefited from
the corruption of the 1990s
still serving in the current
cabinet, despite allegations
made both in the courts and
elsewhere.
In the meantime, however, the
current president of the Central
Bank, Martín Redrado, has been
accused by his former private
secretary and personal friend,
Adrián de Santis, of collecting
”supplementary wages” when he
headed up the National
Securities Commission during the
Menem administration.
In a May 6 radio interview,
Fernández said that if the same
laws are in force today and were
in force at the time of the
graft payments, ”there will be
no legal sanctions or punishment
of any kind; all that is
possible is a heavy moral
sanction.”
Justice Minister Horacio Rosatti
has recommended carrying out ”an
investigation to determine if
the way the money was channelled
was legal or not, beyond any
ethical questions,” and
indicated that unless any laws
were broken, no real punishment
is possible.
In fact, many of the officials
involved had actually admitted
to receiving the payments, in
their sworn financial disclosure
reports.
Legal experts have pointed to a
wide range of actual crimes that
the implicated parties could be
charged with, yet many are
sceptical that the scandal will
eventually lead to prison
sentences. In fact, it is
believed that some of the judges
who should be investigating
these wrongdoings were
recipients of ”supplementary
wages” themselves.
The criminal attorneys consulted
by IPS, including Daniel Sabsay
and Ricardo Monner Sanz, said
that a number of punishable
crimes were involved in this
practice, such as embezzlement,
misappropriation of state funds,
abuse of power, and illicit
association-
Sabsay, a constitutional law
specialist, condemned the very
existence of the secret laws
that have served to shield the
former officials involved from
legal prosecution. ”Secrecy is a
category that the Argentine
constitution neither provides
for nor allows, because public
knowledge of the acts of
government is a basic principle
of the rule of law,” he told IPS.
Moreover, even if the laws are
acceptable, ”the money was
wrongfully acquired,” he argued.
Secrecy can be justified by the
need to ensure the country's
security or defence, but in this
case it was used to fatten the
wallets of government officials
behind the backs of the people
they govern, he added.
But secrecy did not solely serve
to cover up these grossly padded
salaries. There are currently 11
cases before the federal courts
involving crimes committed by
virtue of secretly adopted laws
and decrees.
One involves the illegal sale of
weapons to Ecuador and Croatia
in the mid-1990s, while another
pertains to the payment of a
bribe to a defendant to coerce
him to incriminate third parties
in the 1994 bombing of the AMIA
Jewish community centre.
An investigation is also
underway into the use of secret
funds to bribe senators into
approving highly contested
labour reforms during the
Fernando de la Rúa
administration (1999-2001).
The first high official to admit
to receiving ”supplementary
wages” was former environment
secretary María Julia Alsogaray,
who is currently serving a
prison term for illicit
enrichment.
At her trial, Alsogaray
confessed to being paid seven
times her actual monthly salary
in 2003, through the misuse of
secret funds, while other former
officials from the same
government agency also testified
to receiving these payments.
The next to publicly acknowledge
this widespread practice was
Roberto Martínez Medina, an aide
to former justice minister
Granillo Ocampo, who has also
been charged with illicit gain.
Martínez Medina told the court
that he visited the office of
the chief of cabinet every month
to pick up 100,000 dollars for
the minister.
These funds, which amounted to
ten times the minister's
official salary, were used for
”personal expenses”. Martínez
Medina also reported that every
month, he would run into aides
working for other senior
officials, sent to the office of
the chief of cabinet for the
same purpose.
Former defence minister Camilión
also confessed to being paid
”supplementary wages”, when
questioned in court about a
Swiss bank account containing
millions of dollars.
In February, the chauffeur of
the Menem administration's
coordinator of social action,
Eva Gatica, stated that he had
been sent to pick up hundreds of
thousands of dollars from the
State Intelligence Secretariat
(SIDE) for his employer and
other high officials, including
former interior minister Carlos
Corach and Menem's former
chief-of-staff, Eduardo Bauzá.
More recently, the witness
reported that unidentified
individuals had attempted to
push him out of a train.
A former Defence Ministry
treasurer also described the use
of a similar mechanism. Between
1994 and 1999, he said, the
ministry received millions of
dollars monthly from the
Ministry of the Economy, paid
into an account in the
state-owned Banco Nación. But in
addition to these funds, there
was an extra monthly
disbursement of 100,000 dollars
that he went to pick up
personally ”for the minister.”
Last month, Alsogaray provided
more details of this practice,
noting that ministers received
100,000 dollars, secretaries
40,000, and so on, all of which
was done with the full knowledge
of the legislative and executive
branches.
Speaking from prison, she also
provided the names of
individuals involved, and added
that when Cavallo was still the
minister of the economy, he
urged his colleagues at cabinet
meetings to declare their
”supplementary wages” as part of
their income.
Last week, a former adviser to
the board of Banco Nación,
Enrique N'Haux, released a
supposedly fictional novel that
recounts the mechanisms through
which such payments were passed
to top officials of the
state-run bank. N'Haux also
testified in court against
Cavallo.
The Argentine newspaper Página
12 reported that Cavallo
diverted one million dollars a
month to SIDE under the cover of
secret resolutions, a practice
that was continued by his
successor, Roque Fernández.
According to former Economy
Ministry officials, the money
was clandestinely channelled
back to the ministry and used to
pay the ”supplemental wages” of
the minister, secretaries,
undersecretaries, directors and
advisers, and to finance
political campaigns and pay
bribes to lawmakers reluctant to
vote in favour of bills that the
government wanted to push
through Congress.
Former members of the Supreme
Court have also been implicated
in the scandal, and judicial
authorities have apparently been
provided with the name of the
individual responsible for
picking up and distributing the
envelopes stuffed with money to
the magistrates.
Alsogaray has also singled out a
number of legislators who
allegedly benefited from similar
payments.
Luis Zamora, a former Trotskyite
congressman, maintains that he
denounced the practice in the
1990s, but that the courts
failed to investigate.
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