-Caveat Lector-
February 3, 2001
Tapes From Fujimori Era Scandalize Peru
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/03/world/03PERU.html?pagewanted=all
By CLIFFORD KRAUSS
LIMA, Peru, Feb. 2 � They were the most closely guarded secrets of President
Alberto K. Fujimori's rule, thousands of videotapes documenting the
corruption and sexual high jinks of Peru's most powerful people that his spy
chief used to blackmail and control virtually the entire political
establishment.
Now, as Congress and an investigating judge release the tapes day by day,
they have become a national obsession, shaking the elite to its core,
stunning a mesmerized public and feeding a deep popular suspicion and
cynicism.
The tapes testify to corruption and dissolution reaching to the highest
levels of the army, Legislature, Supreme Court, business community and news
media. Virtually no quarter of power has been left unsinged.
Several of the leading candidates in the April 8 election to replace Mr.
Fujimori, who resigned in November, have already been damaged by the tapes,
which promise to define the political landscape for at least months to come
and perhaps permanently transform how politics are conducted in this Andean
country, which has been an important regional ally of the United States.
The tapes were secretly recorded by Vladimiro Montesinos, Mr. Fujimori's spy
chief and a close associate of the Central Intelligence Agency through most
of the 1990's, who is now a fugitive from justice. They show Mr. Montesinos
and his aides handing out money and giving directions to a wide array of
officials.
"The impact has been sweeping," José Ugaz, the state attorney who is leading
the government's investigation into the former spy chief's activities, said
in an interview. "The presidential candidates complain that the release of
the tapes is being manipulated. The public shows no interest in hearing
about government programs but only demands more videos, and the videos we
have already seen have changed the political scene."
Government officials say there is also evidence that Mr. Montesinos and his
henchmen continue to pull strings behind the scenes, spreading
disinformation in an attempt to destabilize the government, affect the
political campaign and derail the government's investigation.
The videotapes released so far show Mr. Montesinos and his associates
manipulating everything from government arms purchases, to the concession of
mining contracts to foreign companies, to the granting of private bank loans
to political allies, to the fixing of the electoral apparatus to allow Mr.
Fujimori to win a tainted re-election victory last May.
About 2,400 tapes were captured late last year from Mr. Montesinos's offices
and a Lima apartment as he and Mr. Fujimori were forced to resign and take
flight under a cloud of scandal. Mr. Fujimori remains in exile in Japan,
while Mr. Montesinos's whereabouts have remained a mystery since he
reportedly underwent plastic surgery in Venezuela in December.
"The videos show that Montesinos had absolute control over the public
institutions of this country," Mr. Ugaz said. "And he taped absolutely
everything." By Mr. Ugaz's count, the tapes have already helped lead to the
arrests of eight active and retired generals, one Fujimori cabinet minister,
two senior government prosecutors and one mayor.
Four of the Supreme Court's 25 members are under investigation, three of
whom were suspended from their judicial duties this week, accused of links
to Mr. Montesinos. One congressman has been arrested, another has fled to
Miami, and five more are under investigation.
Mr. Ugaz said only 10 percent of the 700 most sensitive videos captured had
been reviewed by judges so far because the former spy chief had them
electronically scrambled, forcing a time-consuming process by which
technicians reprogram the tapes to retrieve a grainy black and white picture
and muffled audio.
Mr. Ugaz said he expected many more officials "at the highest level" to be
revealed taking bribes once all the videos are seen in the coming weeks. Law
enforcement officials are seeking hundreds, if not thousands more videos
that are believed to be hidden around Peru or spirited out of the country.
Alejandro Toledo, who ran a lively campaign against Mr. Fujimori last year
and is the front-runner in the current political contest, said last year
that a Montesinos videotape existed showing him drugged and in a
compromising position with women other than his wife. Mr. Toledo has said he
was kidnapped by government intelligence agents at the time of the taping.
The tape has yet to surface, but others reportedly exist showing prominent
people patronizing a bordello and using illegal drugs.
"There may be all sorts of bombs in the tapes," said Enrique Zileri,
director of Caretas, the country's leading political magazine. "The only
candidate who is not nervous is Alan Garciá, because he was not here for
nine years," he added, referring to the former president who lived in exile
during most of the Fujimori years.
Dirty tricks are still part of Peruvian politics, and many say Mr.
Montesinos and his associates are behind them in an effort to weaken the
interim government and prevent anti-corruption hard-liners from winning the
presidential and congressional elections. "I'm convinced Montesinos is still
a force in the country and his organization � containing hundreds of
people � is still pressuring the Congress, the judiciary and the police,"
Mr. Ugaz said. "To clean this up will take a long time."
Last weekend, one major television network long tied to Mr. Montesinos
broadcast unsubstantiated reports alleging that interim President Valentín
Paniagua had taken a $30,000 campaign contribution from an associate of Mr.
Montesinos.
Mr. Paniagua immediately went on television to deny the charge, and the
network suspended its news gathering activities after several journalists
resigned in protest.
Rumors this week that several major banks are about to go bankrupt, Economy
Minister Javier Silva Ruete said, "can only have its origin in a mafia well
known to us."
A video that showed Mr. Montesinos meeting with three Supreme Court justices
has disappeared � proof, some Peruvians say, that Mr. Montesinos's tentacles
reach deep into the government investigation. The missing tape showed Mr.
Montesinos offering one of the justices, Alipio Montes de Oca, who headed
the national elections commission during last year's balloting, a
$10,000-a-month stipend.
According to a summary transcript released by a criminal court judge before
the tape was lost, Mr. Montes de Oca was heard to say that he would consider
the offer, at which point the former spy chief replied, "You have nothing to
think about."
Mr. Montes de Oca said he had never received the money, but the Supreme
Court has suspended him.
Congress last month temporarily disbanded a legislative committee
investigating the origins of some $80 million that Mr. Montesinos held in
foreign bank accounts, now frozen, after one of its members was seen on a
tape receiving a $4,000 campaign contribution from the brother of an arms
dealer close to Mr. Montesinos.
That videotape was particularly shocking to Peruvians because it apparently
showed that the congressman, Ernesto Gamarra � long one of Mr. Montesinos's
most strident public critics � was in the pay of the spymaster to limit any
investigations into his spy network.
Congressman Fernando Olivera, a leading presidential candidate and close
ally of Mr. Gamarra, has been hard hit by the disclosure, even though it was
his party that revealed the first damaging Montesinos video last September �
showing the spy chief giving a bribe to an opposition legislator � that
sparked the unraveling of the Fujimori government.
Mr. Gamarra has denied any wrongdoing, but he has been thrown out of his
party. And an opinion poll released on Thursday found that Mr. Olivera's
support in Lima and the nearby port of Callao had dropped him from second
place with 17 percent to fourth place with 10.9 percent.
Other tapes suggest that Mr. Montesinos's web of corruption reached deep
into the private sector.
In one tape he is seen meeting with the director of Banco Wiese Sudameris,
Peru's second-largest bank, to ask that debts for media companies friendly
to the Fujimori government be refinanced. In another, Mr. Montesinos pressed
Justice Jaime Beltrán of the Supreme Court to rule in favor of the Newmont
Mining Corporation, based in Denver, in its bid to buy an additional 25
percent share of the country's largest gold mine from a French state-owned
company that preferred to sell to an Australian concern.
Mr. Montesinos argued that if the court favored the American company, it
would help clinch Washington's support for Peru's search for a peace
settlement with Ecuador over a border dispute. The Supreme Court's 1998
decision in favor of Newmont outraged the French government.
Mr. Beltrán denied any wrongdoing, saying the court's ruling was "perfectly
legal."
The investigations of Mr. Montesinos have so far painted a picture of a
reckless man with an unappeasable craving for money and power, with almost
unlimited influence and a taste for diamond-crusted watches and beach-side
mansions.
Mr. Montesinos and his associates, investigators said, sold apartment
buildings and hotels to Peruvian pension funds at highly inflated prices and
directed the purchases of defective Soviet-era MIG fighters.
Peruvian investigators are looking into evidence that he might have been
involved with gunrunning to Marxist guerrillas in Colombia.
His wife, Trinidad Becerra, has been put under house arrest, his daughter
Silvana, 25, has been detained, and other close relatives have gone into
hiding. Several of the relatives had multimillion-dollar foreign bank
accounts in their names.
The tapes and investigations have dominated the radio talk shows and
increased the ratings of the television news programs. "The commotion will
not end," Mr. Ugaz, the investigating judge, said, "until every video is
seen."
But ordinary Peruvians seem less certain that all of the tapes will indeed
be aired publicly, and the tapes seen so far have created widespread
cynicism among Peruvians about their institutions. "These tapes show you
can't trust a single politician," said Manuel Aguilar Crevoisier, 54, a
fireman in Callao. "You watch: they are not going to show all the tapes.
There are too many powerful interests involved."
In Lima, Juana Hinojosa, 40, a street vendor who sells boiled eggs, potatoes
and corn on the cob, was similarly distrustful. "These videos give me great
pain," she said. "All the politicians are the same. They want nothing but
money while we poor people fall farther and farther behind."
<A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A>
DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER
==========
CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic
screeds are unwelcomed. Substance�not soap-boxing�please! These are
sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'�with its many half-truths, mis-
directions and outright frauds�is used politically by different groups with
major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought.
That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and
always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no
credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply.
Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
========================================================================
Archives Available at:
http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html
<A HREF="http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html">Archives of
[EMAIL PROTECTED]</A>
http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/
<A HREF="http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/">ctrl</A>
========================================================================
To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Om
