- 'Made in USA' stamped all over Nicaraguan ex-president's
theft of one hundred million dollars
-
- Many Americans have seen their retirement accounts plummet
uncontrollably over the past several months. There's one retired American,
albeit a Central American, who spent the past few years trying to ensure
that he would be sitting pretty in his dotage.
-
- In a case that fits well within the frame of US politics
and at the same time cries out for us to learn from history, it appears
that Nicaragua's ex-president Arnoldo Aleman - a longtime US favorite -
absconded with $100 million in public funds during his term. The ex-president
has called the charges "a slander campaign," reported the Washington
Post.
-
- On September 1st Reuters reported that Nicaragua's attorney
general charged Aleman and 13 members of his family and former administration
"with money laundering, fraud and other crimes." Aleman, whose
five-year term ended in January, now serves as president of the National
Assembly -- a position that gives him immunity from prosecution.
-
- The last time most of us heard or read anything about
Nicaragua it was related to the country's November 2001 presidential election.
Held barely two months after the terrorist attacks on the United States,
the presidential campaign witnessed an assortment of US government officials
making it clear to the Nicaraguan people that they should not, under any
circumstances, elect Sandinista candidate and former president Daniel Ortega.
-
- President Bush's brother, Florida's Governor Jeb Bush
got into the act with a pre-election op-ed piece for the Miami Herald.
Gov. Bush accused Ortega of having "a 30-year relationship with states
and individuals who harbor and condone international terrorism." Bush
promoted the candidacy of the Liberal Party's Enrique Bolanos, the 73-year-old
conservative businessman and former vice president under Aleman, writing
that Bolanos was "a man whose past indeed promises a future of freedom."
The Washington Post reported that Gov. Bush's ringing endorsement was then
reprinted in a full-page newspaper ad in Nicaragua under the headline:
"Brother of the president of the United States backs Enrique Bolanos."
-
- Other US officials accompanied Bolanos during the campaign,
handing out bags of rice that were stamped "USA." While Bolanos
dwelled on Ortega's so-called ties to "international terrorism,"
Ortega's campaign tried to distance itself from its radical past and concentrate
instead on "the mounting allegations of corruption and spendthrift
ways of the Aleman presidency," reported the Post.
-
- Whether the gifts from US officials or threats that the
US would cut off aid to Nicaragua influenced the election's outcome --
a big victory for Bolanos -- or whether the Nicaraguan people were just
tired of Ortega is open to debate. What isn't debatable is that Ortega,
in targeting the Aleman administration with massive corruption, was right
on target.
-
- Conservative con man
-
- Now, nearly a year later, Aleman and his family are neck
deep in the big muddy.
-
- On September 11, the Associated Press reported that "a
judge has issued arrest warrants for four relatives of... Aleman and six
others connected to him on charges of corruption, fraud and money laundering."
Arrest warrants were issued for the ex-president's sister, brother, wife,
son and several former members of his administration, on charges of transferring
nearly $100 million to banks in Panama, and "then later passing the
money to a foundation controlled by the former president." Aleman's
daughter was also named but she, like her father, serves as a sitting legislator
and also has immunity. President Bolanos has tried, thus far unsuccessfully,
to get both Aleman and his daughter stripped of immunity.
-
- According to the Washington Post, the US provides $35
million a year in direct aid to Nicaragua. For a country like Nicaragua,
the second poorest in the hemisphere (Haiti is first), $100 million is
a considerable chunk of change. And as the Washington Post also noted,
"eighty percent of Nicaragua's 5 million people live in poverty and
half earn less than $1 a day."
-
- A September 12 report in the Washington Post provided
some of the sorry details of Aleman's spending spree. In addition to a
$45,000 "engagement party Aleman threw in August 1999 in Miami for
himself and his fiancée at government expense," there was $1.8
million in American Express credit card charges which included lavish vacations
and gifts.
-
- For decades the United States has been deeply involved
in Nicaragua, literally creating, financially supporting and arming the
corrupt Contra forces that fought against the Sandinistas and destabilized
the country. "Aleman," says the Washington Post's Kevin Sullivan,
"was long a protégé of the United States, which focused
on his staunch anti-Sandinista credentials rather than the mounting evidence
that he was fleecing his country."
-
- "They're stingy," Aleman reportedly said of
the United States. "I would like for them to put the money where the
words are. It's not much. We're together on a cause. For the size of the
economy of the U.S., for the few pennies that we need, it's like, 'Brother,
could you spare a dime?'"
-
- The Nicaragua Network Hotline, posted at NicaNet, the
website of the Nicaragua Network, described the US's reaction to the Aleman
scandal: "Otto Reich, Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere
Affairs, seems to have finally turned its back on a former favorite. Reich
apparently had no recollection of the fact that it was the US government
that boosted Aleman into the president's chair in 1996 in the first place,
when his credentials as one of the country's most corrupt politicians were
already well-established." Reich reportedly told President Bolanos
that the US "is completely behind" his "efforts to root
out corruption and terrorism."
-
- Oliver Garza, who is leaving his post as US Ambassador
to Nicaragua, said that the US has worked behind the scenes in carrying
out investigations into Aleman's bank accounts held in other countries.
-
- Made in the USA
-
- Charges of massive government corruption has several
Nicaraguan "commentators warn[ing] that to continue to rely on the
US, 'for bad or for good,' was to continue a relationship of dependence
which had brought Nicaragua little real help in the past, and which militated
against the country ever finding its own true path," reported the
Nicaragua Network Hotline. Daniel Ortega, who is also working to get Aleman's
parliamentary immunity stripped, pointed out: "Looking to the US for
solutions is a false way out of our problems. This [Aleman's corruption]
is a matter for Nicaraguans. It must be settled by Nicaraguans."
-
- Jose Leon Talavera, a member of the legislature, opined
that "Aleman has just two possible choices: To submit himself to justice,
here in Nicaragua, or, to seek asylum in one of the few Latin American
countries that possibly remain open to him." Talavera and former Sandinista
Carlos Tunnermann warned that any attempt by the United States to extradite
Aleman to try him for money laundering would be futile, while a commando-style
invasion, as in Panama, would be extremely destabilizing for Nicaragua.
-
- Victor Hugo Tinoco took the allusion to Manuel Noriega
of Panama one step further. "Aleman's problem is that he was born,
and grew to adulthood, at the breast of the United States. To have that
source of support and nourishment withdrawn has put him in personal crisis
and he is therefore prepared to throw the whole country into crisis. This
phenomenon can be seen over and again in the case of leaders from the right
wing. Look at the Somozas. They were backed to the hilt by all the economic
and political resources of the US. Why? To confront and contain movements
of the left. Then, as things develop, and the United States finds them
becoming an obstacle in some way, they have to be cut loose and abandoned
to their fate. Just like Somoza. Just like Noriega. So Aleman."
-
- http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?ItemID=13833
-
- Bill Berkowitz Archive:
- http://www.workingforchange.com/column_lst.cfm?AuthrId=1
-
|
