Posted on 05/14/2003 11:54:47 AM PDT by CanadianFella
MONTEVIDEO, May 13 (IPS) - The two consecutive terms of former Argentine president Carlos Menem, who goes to the polls in next Sunday's presidential runoff election, were marked by a trail of mysterious deaths.
Among those who were murdered in unclarified circumstances, died in what were reported as accidents and suicides, or died of supposed heart attacks or strokes were investigative journalists, witnesses, or people who knew too much, whose downfall could drag along with them other people implicated in the most serious scandals of corruption, arms and drug smuggling, and money laundering in the history of Argentina.
The spate of mysterious deaths involved people who were linked to scandals and crimes in which members of the Menem clan, his close associates and friends, or people who served on his cabinet were invariably implicated.
Although the polls indicate that Menem will not beat his rival and fellow Peronist, the governor of the southern province of Santa Cruz, Nestor Kirchner, in next Sunday's runoff election, the former president (1989-1999) continues to wield significant power and controls part of the judiciary.
In 1990 the Menem administration gained a firm grip on the Supreme Court by expanding the number of magistrates from five to nine and replacing several judges who were not pro-Menem.
That Menem-packed court remains in place today.
Similar measures were taken in the public prosecutor's office and all of the state's oversight bodies.
The list of puzzling deaths began with customs official Rodolfo Etchegoyen, whose body appeared on Dec. 13, 1990 with a bullet wound to the head. The cause of death was reported as "suicide, and the investigation was closed. But his family is still working to prove that he was murdered.
Etchegoyen, who resigned on Nov. 7, 1990, had been appointed customs supervisor with the backing of Alfredo Yabran, a shady business tycoon with close ties to the Menem administration, who has also since died. Etchegoyen reportedly ran into problems with drug trafficking rings.
A customs warehouse administered by Yabran was a warren of drug trafficking and other criminal activity, while a money laundering racket flourished in the Ezeiza international airport, where the ex-husband of the president's former sister-in-law, Amira Yoma, was active.
In August 1994, assistant police commissioner Jorge Gutierrez was shot in the back of the head and killed while riding a train. Gutierrez had been investigating the warehouse administered by Yabran, as well as the customs services firm Defisa, which formed part of a smuggling racket known in the courts as the "parallel customs system."
Customs agent Jose Gussoni, who denounced irregularities in the purchase of a computer system that was aimed at curbing the activities of the "parallel customs system," died when his car crashed into a truck. The courts ruled that he died in "suspicious circumstances."
In late February 2003 the body of assistant police commissioner Jorge Luis Piazza, a witness in the investigation of Gutierrez's death, appeared with a gunshot to the back of his head.
Others who died in mysterious circumstances were linked to a major arms smuggling scandal.
Between 1991 and 1995, Menem and several of his cabinet ministers signed three secret decrees authorizing supposed arms sales to Panama and Venezuela.
But the real destinations of the weapons shipments were Croatia, which was in the midst of a war of secession from the former Yugoslavia, and Ecuador, involved in a border war with Peru. At the time of the weapons deliveries, Yugoslavia was subject to a United Nations (news - web sites) international arms embargo, and Argentina was a guarantor of the peace treaty between Ecuador and Peru.
In November 1995 a huge explosion occurred in the munitions depot of Fabricaciones Militares, a state-owned arms manufacturer in the north-central province of Cordoba. Three neighbourhoods were destroyed, seven people were killed, and 350 were injured.
After several years of following false leads and dead ends in the investigation of the accident, the courts ruled that the explosion was purposely set off in order to cover up the trail of arms smuggling to Croatia and Ecuador.
Two others related to the case died in a 1996 helicopter crash: General Juan Carlos Andreoli, the overseer at Fabricaciones Militares, and Colonel Rodolfo Aguilar, who had denounced the illegal arms sales.
Vicente Bruzza, an employee in the Fabricaciones Militares factory and a whistle-blower who reported strange circumstances surrounding the explosion, died of a heart attack in 1997.
Francisco Callejas, another employee of Fabricaciones Militares, who travelled to Croatia to provide technical assistance for operating the smuggled weapons, died of a stroke in June 1998.
In August 1998 retired navy captain Horacio Estrada, who was questioned about the firearms smuggled to Ecuador, was found dead in his apartment with a bullet to his left temple. He was right-handed.
In September of the same year the assistant administrator of the Buenos Aires customs house, Carlos Alberto Alonso, died of a purported heart attack. Alonso had been in charge of inspections at the time of the weapons deliveries to Croatia, and was expected to testify in court when he died.
Yabran was also found dead with his head completely caved in by a gunshot wound in May 1998, when the noose was tightening around him for the January 1997 murder of photojournalist José Luis Cabezas.
The journalist was killed after he published photographs of people allegedly involved in police and business corruption scandals, including images of Yabran himself, whose face until then was not publicly known.
The investigation of Cabezas' death led to criminals and corrupt police, and eventually to Yabran.
Another mysterious death was that of Marcelo Cattaneo, who was implicated in the scandal over bribes paid by U.S. information technology giant IBM to secure lucrative contracts for computerizing the branch offices of an Argentine government-owned bank, the Banco Nacion. He had business dealings with the president's chief of staff, Alberto Kohan.
Cattaneo's body was found hanging from an antenna tower in a lonely spot on the outskirts of Buenos Areas on Oct. 4, 1998. His family said he did not commit suicide, but was murdered.
After Cattaneo's death, parliamentary Deputy Guillermo Francos, a member of the congressional committee investigating corruption allegations, said "It seems some kind of suicide epidemic is attacking people with very important information about corruption in Argentina."
Impunity has also surrounded terrorist attacks in Argentina. In 1992, 29 people were killed in an explosion in the Israeli Embassy. And in 1994, a car-bomb tore apart the Argentine-Israeli Mutual Association (AMIA), a Jewish community center, leaving a death toll of 85.
After years of fruitless investigations, a new element emerged when a former Iranian government official claimed Menem had accepted a bribe from Iran to block the inquiry.
But not even Menem's own family has escaped the wave of mysterious deaths. Carlos Menem Junior died in March 1995 when the helicopter he was flying crashed. Two bodies were found, but witnesses said there were three people in the helicopter.
Twelve people linked to the case, which was ruled an "accident," have died in shady circumstances. All 12 were witnesses and investigators whose testimony or evidence pointed to a different explanation: that the helicopter crashed after it was shot at from the ground.
Zulema Yoma, Junior's mother and Menem's ex-wife, has never believed the crash was an accident, and suggests that her son's death was somehow linked to the bomb attacks on the Israeli Embassy and AMIA.
Despite myriad hurdles, cabinet ministers, members of the military, and even Menem himself were prosecuted in connection with the arms smuggling case. Menem was accused of heading an illicit association, and was put under house arrest for five months, starting in June 2001.
But he was rescued from political ostracism when the Supreme Court threw out the charges against him, thus making it possible for him to run for the presidency once again.
Although the opinion polls indicate that the Menem era has come to an end, impunity continues to reign.
On Mar. 1 Lourdes Di Natale, a former private secretary of Menem's ex-brother-in-law Emir Yoma, and the key witness in the arms-smuggling case, fell from her 10th floor apartment. Her meticulous day-planners were conclusive evidence in the prosecution of Yoma and Menem.
Di Natale, who was about to testify in the trial for the Fabricaciones Militares explosion, had reported death threats and said she was being followed. Nevertheless, authorities say her death may have been an accident or suicide.
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