The implications of the Riggs Bank-Pinochet money laundering scandal continue to raise uncomfortable questions for Pinochet supporters in Chile. Today's New York Times has this article (by Rio de Janeiro bureau chief Larry Rohter continuing to spend less time in Brazil) about Pinochet continuing to "haunt" Chile's civilian government:
But Mr. Lagos also faces pressure from within his own governing coalition to act more decisively. Legislators representing all three of the main parties in that alliance said that when Congress meets next week, they would immediately introduce a bill to set up a commission to investigate the Riggs accounts."There has always been suspicion of money overseas," Juan Bustos, a Socialist Party deputy, told reporters. "Society must have a clear picture and verify whether or not there has been illicit enrichment."
This also leads to this question: ¿De dónde este dinero vino?
But none of General Pinochet's partisans have been willing to explain precisely how he could have accumulated a fortune while earning a soldier's salary during the 17 years in which he was Chile's dictator. The origins of his wealth, according to the version most often heard, is that businessmen grateful for his economic policies cut him in on real estate and other lucrative deals after he stepped down, but documentary proof has not been made public.
It's actually more than seventeen years. Bear in mind that Pinochet was dictator from 1973 to 1990, but he continued as head of the armed forces until April 1998. The investigation disclosed that the two shell corporations that Riggs helped Pinochet set up happened between 1996 and 1998, when he was still a soldier. According Andrés Oppenheimer in this article in today's Miami Herald:
According to the Senate probe, Riggs had kept the Pinochet accounts since 1994, ''with no serious inquiry into questions regarding the source of his wealth.'' According to Senate investigators, Pinochet had told Riggs that his deposits were the proceeds from speaking engagements and good investments in the Chilean stock market. Riggs ''helped him set up offshore shell corporations . . . to disguise his control of the accounts,'' it said.
So this begs the obvious question: if the source of the revenue was legitimate, why was there the need to set up the offshore accounts and the shell corporations? Pinochet's allies are in serious denial. I'll let Oppenheimer have the last word:
My conclusion: We should soon find out where the Pinochet funds came from. If they came from public speaking, I know many authors who would love to meet his agent. If they came from good stock market investments, I'm sure many people would pay to hire his stockbroker.
Indeed.
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