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CORRUPTION-PERU:
Fujimori Family
Secret Bank Accounts Uncovered
Ángel Páez
LIMA, (IPS) -
Anti-corruption authorities in
Peru have discovered numerous
secret bank accounts holding up
to 4.5 million dollars in the
names of former Peruvian
ambassador to Japan Víctor
Aritomi and his wife Rosa
Fujimori, former president
Alberto Fujimori's sister.
"These are definite leads
towards tracking down the
ill-gotten money believed to be
in the possession of Fujimori
and his family," said Walter
Hoflich, the financial
intelligence expert heading up
the investigation of the former
president for the Office of the
Special Prosecutor for
Corruption Offences.
"This is incredible
information," the prosecutor
remarked to IPS.
Bank documents recording the
movements of the money in
question emerged during the
liquidation of Norbank, a bank
used between 1990 and 2000 by
Fujimori and his closest
relatives for large-scale
financial transactions in Lima.
Among the papers turned up by
Norbank's liquidators were
requests for withdrawals of up
to a million dollars made by
Mutsue Inomoto de Fujimori, the
mother of the man who ruled Peru
from 1990 to 2000 and is
currently in prison in Chile,
while Peru is preparing a
request for his extradition.
"Mrs. Mutsue withdrew the money
between 1995 and 1998, when she
was between 83 and 86 years old,
which indicates that they used
her as a front to cover up the
illegal origins of these funds,"
a source connected to the
Norbank liquidation told IPS.
When the first indications of
Mutsue de Fujimori's sizeable
accounts at Norbank came to
light in 2003, her son Alberto
maintained that this money
represented "the savings of a
lifetime devoted to selling
flowers and Christmas trees,
honest work."
The anti-corruption authorities
questioned how the octogenarian
had managed to amass a fortune
through such a modest business,
but despite the importance of
the discovery, they did not
pursue the investigation when
the information first emerged in
2003.
It was not until Fujimori was
arrested in Santiago, Chile last
month that the authorities
decided to ask the Norbank
liquidators for more information
on the former first family's
banking operations. The results
were shocking.
The lead prosecutor in the
investigation of the Fujimori
family's operations at Norbank,
Cecilia Hinojosa, has received
copious documentation shedding
light on the origins of the 20
million dollars moved around in
the accounts that were
uncovered.
On Jul. 5, 1990 during a trip to
Japan shortly before taking
office, Fujimori (the son of
Japanese immigrants) instructed
the Peruvian ambassador there to
open an account at the Bank of
Tokyo, to be used exclusively
for Japanese donations to aid
poor children in Peru.
In 1991, Fujimori appointed his
brother-in-law Víctor Aritomi -
his sister Rosa's husband - as
the new Peruvian ambassador to
Japan, and placed him in charge
of the Bank of Tokyo account. At
the same time, he named Rosa as
the representative to the
non-governmental organisation
Apenkai, founded for the purpose
of raising funds in Japan to
build schools in impoverished
areas of Peru.
>From 1990 to 2000, Japanese
citizens and institutions made
donations of over 20 million
dollars. Of this total, 4.5
million were diverted and
withdrawn by Rosa Fujimori
through accounts at Norbank, an
affiliate of the Bank of Tokyo
in Peru.
"Instead of using all of the
donated money to build schools
for poor children, they
appropriated a large part of it
for their own benefit," said
Hoflich. "What the new documents
reveal is the precise financial
outline of how they got hold of
this money."
The case of the embezzled
donations prompted the Peruvian
courts to order the arrest of
Víctor Aritomi and Rosa Fujimori,
but as the former president
himself had done in 2000, the
couple fled to Japan, which
refuses to extradite them.
In 2003, Norbank documents
revealed that Rosa Fujimori had
written a cheque for 150,000
dollars to her brother Alberto
on Sept. 26, 1996. At the time,
the former president stated that
the cheque involved the
"repayment of a family loan" to
a friend. He never explained
where his sister had acquired
the money.
The bank records turned over
this week provide an answer: the
150,000 dollar cheque was part
of the money diverted from the
Japanese donations, which also
proves that Fujimori profited
from the money skimmed off by
his sister.
To cover the trail of the true
origins of the money in their
accounts, Rosa Fujimori and
Víctor Aritomi used not only the
former president's elderly
mother, but also the names of
their own children, Yayoi and
Gledy.
Others who purportedly served as
figureheads for the bank scam
include the former leader's
younger brother Pedro Fujimori
and Augusto Miyagusuku, known as
the "family cashier", a trusted
ally who handled the Apenkai
accounts with Rosa.
The bank documents show that in
order to get the money out of
the country, Rosa Fujimori made
numerous transfers to accounts
at Citibank and Swiss Bank in
New York and the offices of the
Banco do Brasil in Tokyo.
The anti-corruption authorities
also believe that Rosa Fujimori
could have taken money with her
to Japan in her husband's
diplomatic valise, an allegation
previously made by Vladimiro
Montesinos, Alberto Fujimori's
former security chief who is
currently in jail in Peru facing
numerous corruption and human
rights charges.
"The Norbank documents which
prove that Fujimori's relatives
moved over four million dollars
of the Japanese donations are
evidence of the crimes of
misappropriation and illicit
association," said corruption
expert Carlos Rivera of the
Legal Defence Institute.
"The financial scheme that they
used is clearly demonstrated by
the bank records: they received
the donations, diverted part of
them to the accounts of family
members, and a part ended up in
Fujimori's hands," he commented.
"This information has come at a
key moment to demonstrate the
responsibility of Fujimori and
his family," he added.
Rivera criticised the
anti-corruption prosecutors for
taking two years to ask for more
information in the case.
Hinojosa has instructed the
Norbank liquidators to
immediately report any further
records of account movements.
"These documents are the most
promising lead to finding the
money illegally acquired by
former president Fujimori and
his family," said a source from
Hinojosa's office.
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