Pinochet report welcomed in Chile: BBC

BBC


The Chilean government has welcomed a US Senate report that found former military ruler Augusto Pinochet hid at least $13m (£6.7m) in US bank accounts.

A Chilean official said the report would be made available to a judge investigating allegations of fraud and tax evasion.

The report found that Gen Pinochet, his family and senior officers had set up 125 bank accounts, mostly in the US.

Gen Pinochet's lawyers rejected the report as a "real joke".

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4356777.stm

March 16 (Bloomberg) -- Former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet and his family over 25 years stashed at least $15 million in more than 125 hidden accounts at Citigroup Inc. and other banks, a U.S. Senate report said.

Pinochet, 89, whose regime killed and tortured thousands of Chileans, used the accounts to move funds from offshore holding companies to personal accounts in the U.S. and to transfer cash to Chile, said the staff report of the Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.

Senate investigators said the former dictator's use of banks with U.S. operations was far more extensive than previously disclosed. In addition to 63 accounts at Citigroup and 28 at Washington-based Riggs Bank, Pinochet and his family had accounts at foreign banks with U.S. operations, including Banco de Chile and Espirito Santo Bank of Miami, a unit of Portugal's Banco Espirito Santo, the report said.

Before 2004, ``U.S. regulators and law enforcement were generally unaware that Augusto Pinochet had constructed a web of largely hidden accounts in the U.S. and was using these accounts on a regular basis to move funds and transact business,'' the report said.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000086&sid=aWkzQ4eLXp74&refer=latin_america

AND what's more all the money was stolen.....

He is a traitor who should be fed to the dogs.

and that POS Kissinger should rot in jail along with him... death is too easy.

May the uncle suffer the same fate...

<clips>

A nephew of former Chilean dictator General Augusto Pinochet is offering on sale one of his kidneys in a last ditch effort to survive from bankruptcy, reports this week the Santiago press

"I don't have any other choice" Gonzalo Townsend Pinochet told the El Mercurio newspaper, adding that he went broke after a clothing business he owned in Puerto Montt, 680 miles south of Santiago, failed.

Mr. Townsend said he was in such a desperate situation that he did not even want money for the kidney, just a job, "doing whatever". Mr. Townsend, who has always been a staunch supporter of his uncle, said he had written to 140 businessmen whom his family helped when it was in power and only one replied.

A few years ago, Mr. Gonzalo Townsend was the president of the Magallanes professional soccer team.

He also founded the Movimiento Pinochetista Unitario to "defend the work and legacy" of his uncle, but the party, which Mr. Townsend hoped would be a vehicle for winning the presidency, died out because of lack of support.

http://www.falkland-malvinas.com/Detalle.asp?NUM=5265&Palabra=kidney

Fabiola Letelier, a human rights lawyer whose sister died in a car bomb in Washington in 1976, told the BBC the money should be recovered and handed back to victims of the military regime.


Fabiola's brother died in the car bombing. Keeerist, don't editors check anything? It's not like he was an unknown. Orlando Letelier was an ambassador to the US under the Allende government who, after the coup, was picked up by Pinochet's police, tortured, and sent to a political prison on Tierra del Fuego. After release and during the US Operation Condor he was killed when his car was bombed in Washington where he was working to restore democracy in Chile--first terrorist act on US soil. His assistance, Ronni Moffit, died with him.

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<clips>

Orlando Letelier's assassination was part of a coordinated effort by several right-wing military dictatorships in Latin America to intimidate and murder their political opponents. This effort, known as Operation Condor, included such nations as Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay and Bolivia. Three of those nations -- Uruguay, Argentina and Chile -- began assassinating opposition figures in foreign countries during the spring of 1976. The United States government was aware of the existence of Operation Condor.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orlando_Letelier

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Declassified docs on Operation Condor and the US part in overthrowing a democratically elected leader

<clips>

After twenty-seven years of withholding details about covert activities following the 1973 military coup in Chile, the CIA released a report yesterday acknowledging its close relations with General Augusto Pinochet’s violent regime. The report, “CIA Activities in Chile,” revealed for the first time that the head of the Chile’s feared secret police, DINA, was a paid CIA asset in 1975, and that CIA contacts continued with him long after he dispatched his agents to Washington D.C. to assassinate former Chilean Ambassador Orlando Letelier and his 25-year old American associate, Ronni Karpen Moffitt.

“CIA actively supported the military Junta after the overthrow of Allende,” the report states. “Many of Pinochet’s officers were involved in systematic and widespread human rights abuses....Some of these were contacts or agents of the CIA or US military.”

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20000919/#docs