CAPITALISM'S ACHILLES HEEL Dirty Money and How to

98 CAPITALISM’S ACHILLES HEEL
or $770 million, according to alternative sources. Allegedly, Montesinos’s
kickbacks were up to 50 percent, and the three principal partners in Los
Gordos allegedly contributed $30 million each to Fujimori’s 1995 reelection
campaign.
And who were Montesinos’s staunch supporters through the 1990s?
Why, his close friends at the CIA, reportedly paying SIN, Montesinos’s intelligence
service, $1 million a year through the decade. This caused consternation
within the DEA, which had long recognized Montesinos for the
criminal and drug facilitator that he was. But the intelligence folks were
steadfast: “At U.S. interagency meetings about U.S. policy toward Peru in
the late 1990s and 2000, the CIA was the agency that spoke most forcefully
on behalf of the maintenance of the U.S. relationship with Vladimiro
Montesinos, and its position prevailed through approximately June
2000.” 98
Montesinos’s grip on power finally began to unravel later that summer.
In connection with the AK-47s parachuted into Colombia, Fujimori held an
August press conference with Montesinos, praising his spy chief for breaking
up an international arms smuggling ring. Knowing they had been duped by
Montesinos, the Jordanians blew a gasket and undiplomatically suggested
that, instead of dismantling the ring, Montesinos was the ring. A video was
leaked by his enemies showing Montesinos bribing a congressman to change
parties. It turns out Montesinos had thousands of videos implicating much
of Peru’s political class.
Montesinos escaped first to Panama in September 2000, then came
back, then escaped again to Venezuela. Fujimori, after a few weeks of pretending
he was cleaning up the mess, left town, too, sending his resignation
as president back to Lima by fax from Japan. In mid-2001, Montesinos was
captured in Caracas and returned to Peru, where he is incarcerated in the
prison he built to hold members of Peru’s Shining Path guerrilla movement.
Details of his financial skullduggery came gushing forth. Bank accounts
and other financial arrangements were reportedly uncovered in the United
States, Mexico, Panama, Bolivia, Uruguay, the Cayman Islands, Luxembourg,
and Switzerland. Principal banks allegedly providing Montesinos or
his front men with their services included in the United States, Citibank,
Bank of New York, and Pacific Industrial Bank, and in Switzerland, UBS,
Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, Crédit Agricole Indosuez, Crédit
Lyonnais, Bank Leumi, FIBI Bank, Bank Adamas, and Bank CAI. In addi-