Corrupt ex-leaders say adios to impunity?

By Stephen Brown

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (Reuters): A nephew of Argentine ex- President Carlos Menem helping to defend him says lawyers "run in the family": other Latin American leaders might do well to follow suit, as their impunity is coming to an end.

Regional and legal experts say Venezuela's recent arrest of Latin America's most wanted fugitive, former Peruvian spy chief Vladimiro Montesinos, Menem's arrest earlier this month and the proceedings against former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, prove that regional leaders can no longer escape justice.

"What is stunning about these cases is that despite all the evidence, they could not be touched -- that's the essence of power. Now there is a sense that leaders will be held to account," Michael Shifter of the Washington-based think-tank Inter-American Dialog.

"It's a very strong message," said Cynthia McClintock, professor of politics at George Washington University and a veteran Peru-watcher. "It's important the process has caught up with Pinochet, Menem is arrested and Montesinos was captured."

The suspicions leveled at them are very different: illegal arms sales and embezzlement in Menem's case, human rights crimes in Pinochet's case, and in Montesinos' case, all of the above, with drug trafficking to boot.

But, as Chilean political scientist Ricardo Israel put it: "We've overcome the impunity stage, they have been dragged into court. Now we must see if we can do justice in Latin America."

He called it "one positive effect of globalization" fitting into a global groundswell for cross-border legality that could, for example, soon see the former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic tried in The Hague for alleged war crimes.

The arrest of Peru's Montesinos, who triggered a bribe scandal that felled ex-President Alberto Fujimori, quashed talk he was protected by Venezuela in the time-honored tradition of sheltering fallen foreign leaders no matter what their crimes.

"It's an interesting development that corrupt ex-leaders have such a bad press that governments are not going to ruin their reputations protecting them," said Nicolas Shumway, head of Latin American studies at the University of Texas.

Law professor Christopher Greenwood of the London School of Economics, who represented Spain in the Pinochet case, called it "indicative of greater international cooperation in enforcing international law."

"I hope we are going toward an age where there will be no safe haven for people who commit terrible crimes. But there is a lot of work to do before we get there," said Greenwood.

Pinochet's arrest in London for alleged human rights crimes in his 1973-1990 regime launched a process creating what Shumway called a "new assertiveness" in Latin America's courts.

Bribed and browbeaten by pushy presidents for decades or even centuries, Latin American judges are now encouraged by such precedent, and help from investigative journalists, to take former leaders to task over embezzlement or violence.

"There's no doubt there has been a change in Latin American courts, which in the past were very dependent on the civilian or military government," said Israel. "There's a new generation of young judges, like Jorge Urso in Argentina" -- investigating illegal arms sales to Ecuador and Croatia between 1991-1995.

But defenders of Menem, who was in power then, question the legitimacy of the charges against him, saying Urso, who has yet to indict him, is pressured by the center-left government.

Defenders of 85-year-old Pinochet arguing he is mentally unfit for trial say human rights groups are exerting pressure. It is less likely that Montesinos, who filmed himself giving bribes on 2,000 tapes and is accused of graft that investigators say was up to US$1 billion, will try such a defense.

Pinochet, Menem and Montesinos' boss Fujimori were all the heroes of free-market economic reform in Latin America. Chile's right-wing worships Pinochet for keeping out Marxism in the 1970s, Menem tamed the rebellious military and Fujimori beat the Shining Path guerrillas in the 1990s.

Whether they are convicted or freed, Latin America can only move on if justice is not vindictive or "politically motivated" -- a term used this week by banker Eduardo Escasany in Buenos Aires, where some are speaking of a judicial "witch hunt".

"The possibility this is a political act is real," Shumway said. "It will come down to how good their legal arguments are. In Chile people suffering from dementia can't be tried. If the case against Pinochet is dropped for this reason, the rule of law has triumphed even though Pinochet has not been punished."

According to Peruvian columnist Mirko Lauer of La Republic newspaper, the recent arrests are "only a start, not the end of anything. Things like corruption cannot be stopped in jail, they are stopped in the schoolroom."

Lauer said dirty politics would only be cleaned up once the culture of corruption is uprooted by education -- a process not helped by spreading the "belief that corruption's name in Argentina is Menem or Montesinos in Peru. It has 10,000 names."