Augusto Pinochet, the 89-year-old former strongman of Chile and
alleged torturer and murderer, has frequently slipped his pursuers,
pleading ill health or relying on protectors at home in the Chilean
military. But now an unexpected nemesis is pursuing him, in the
shape of his tax returns.
Laptop Battery The dogged pursuit of his multimillion dollar fortune by a
Chilean judge, Sergio Muoz, culminated last month in the arrest of
General Pinochet's wife and son in Santiago. The hunt has unearthed
a sophisticated array of bank accounts and offshore hiding places.
It has also left Britain's biggest arms company, BAE, facing many
questions in what may prove one of the biggest scandals to hit an
already scandal-prone company.
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Thinkpad The Chilean legal documents, based on US
banking records, list secret
payments by BAE to what are said to be front companies and
middlemen for Gen Pinochet. They total $2,098,841 (more than 1m).
The payments began in 1997, and the latest were recorded last year.
A final $189,940 payment went into an alleged front company on June
30 last year. Many of the recent payments were not recorded in the
name of BAE, but in that of Red Diamond Trading, an entity
registered in the
financial "black hole" of the
British Virgin Islands. The company was set up in 1998 by a
discreet subdivision of BAE at its Farnborough HQ. It has the
uninformative title of HQ Marketing Services.
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Microsoft Its staff are frequent visitors to Switzerland, where they keep
records of agents' contracts in a bank vault. Red Diamond Trading
is used by Marketing Services to make covert payments to agents in
South America who help BAE make arms and aerospace sales to Latin
American governments. Documents obtained by the Guardian show that
Red Diamond is not listed as a subsidiary in BAE's accounts, but
transfers secret "commissions" on their behalf through Lloyds
Bank.
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Laptop Computers Why would BAE pay Gen Pinochet all this money in so secret a
fashion? The Chilean media accuse
him of taking bribes for delivering arms sales, and there are two
big arms deals in which BAE has been involved in recent years. One
was the Rayo rocket system.
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Laptop Computer BAE wined and dined Gen Pinochet on visits throughout the 1990s,
and in 1994 the Chilean military, of which Gen Pinochet remained
commander in chief after he stepped down as president, agreed to
set up a joint venture to produce the weapon. The Rayo fires a
salvo of 24 high-explosive rockets at a time, at distances of up to
30 miles. The Chilean army is reported to have spent $60m on the
project before pulling out of it in 2003, five years after Gen
Pinochet retired as commander in chief to assume a new title as
senator for life.
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Desktop Computer The second project is disclosed in a confidential bulletin of
the Ministry of Defence's arms sales unit. It says BAE has a joint
venture called Sisdef with the Chilean naval shipyards for "naval
systems integration". There are opportunities, it says, to sell
frigates, upgrade warships, supply offshore patrol vessels and
provide radar and fire-control systems, as well as training.
Britain sold the surplus frigate HMS Sheffield to Chile in 2003.
The MoD lists Chile as a "key market". However, it has been illegal
in Britain to make corrupt payments to foreign public officials
since 2001. Legislation on money-laundering has also been tightened
up since the terrorist attacks of 9/11 in the same year. The US
bank documents list large, secret Pinochet-linked payments by BAE
after that date - three of them in 2003 and five last year. Many of
them go through a branch in Miami of Coutts, the British
institution which looks after the Queen's money.
Notebooks The Guardian asked BAE what was the purpose of the covert cash
transfers to Gen Pinochet. Last night it said: "All BAE Systems'
employees are required to act with honesty, integrity and fairness.
We will not tolerate bribery or other attempts to improperly
influence the decisions of customers or suppliers. We are committed
to conduct our business to the highest ethical standards. We comply
with the law in all countries where we operate."
Lenovo The bank records implicating BAE have come to light as the
result of a remarkable detective story. It, too, originated in the
growing US concern about terrorist money laundering after 9/11. In
Washington, a Democratic senator, Carl Levin, and a Republican
colleague, Norm Coleman, launched an inquiry into the venerable
Washington Riggs Bank. This followed reports that Saudi funds
passing through it might have been used for terrorism.
Hard Drive What they found was so shattering that it led to the demise of
the bank. Riggs executives had been profiting from handling the
cash of criminals and dictators around the world. President Teodoro
Obiang of oil-rich Equatorial Guinea was revealed to have looted
millions and put it in his family's accounts at Riggs. Gen Pinochet
had more than $8m squirrelled away. As the inquiry proceeded it
turned up more and more accounts, drawing in more and more hitherto
respected financial institutions. One was Coutts, which had first
set up accounts for Gen Pinochet in 1993 at its Miami branch. When
other banks closed down accounts hiding funds for Gen Pinochet,
Coutts took them over. Coutts told investigators it did not realise
that the octogenarian was the figure behind two offshore shells
controlled by Gen Pinochet's Chilean financial adviser, Oscar
Aitkin.
Travelstar Last March, the senate committee produced a supplementary
report, delving into more than 100 accounts Gen Pinochet had set up
using false names, the names of his wife and
children, or the name of his
lawyer. In Santiago, Judge Muoz seized on this evidence. Like Al
Capone, the gangster who was eventually nailed by the US tax
authorities, this investigation was seen as an alternative to
the human rights cases brought against the former dictator which
had stalled or expired as he claimed immunity or ill health. The
Chilean authorities fired off legal requests to US courts to
gain disclosure of the banking records. Handed over
last month, these listed for the first time not only how much
money Gen Pinochet had received, but where it had come from.
European arms companies were high on the list. BAE was the most
prominent.
Gateway Story put together with help from the Chilean daily newspaper La
Tercera
The payments
Laptop Parts Payments from BAE Systems plc to offshore company
Cornwall
Software December 1997 $573,783 ($70,000 immediately to secret Swiss
account)
Hard Drives March 2000 $144,767
Electronics April 1 2003 $16,220
Canon June 25 2003 $16,220
Desktop Pc October 1 2003 $16,216
Desktop Computers February 17 2004 $8,761
Think Pad April 1 2004 $18,156
Repair May 19 2004 $99,970
Data Recovery June 30 2004 $179,970
Cisco June 30 2004 $9,970
Keyboard Payment from BAE Systems plc to offshore company
Tasker
Monitor October 26 2000 $5,671
Desktop Payment from Red Diamond Trading Limited to
Tasker
Infosys November 28 2000 $317,456
Refurbished Laptops April 24 2001 233,767 converted to
US$334,931
Wipro June 11 2001 $27,205
Lap Top October 16 2001 $329,545
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