Vladimiro Montesinos
Encyclopedia
Vladimiro Ilyich Montesinos Torres (born May 20, 1945) was the long-standing head of Peru
's intelligence
service, Servicio de Inteligencia Nacional
(SIN), under President Alberto Fujimori
. In 2000, secret videos, which he had recorded, were televised that showed his bribing an elected congressman to leave the opposition and join the Fujimorist side of Congress. The ensuing scandal caused Montesinos to flee the country and hastened the resignation of Fujimori.
Subsequent investigations revealed Montesinos to be at the centre of a vast web of illegal activities, including embezzlement
, graft
, gunrunning
, and drug trafficking. He has been tried, convicted and sentenced for numerous charges. Montesinos had strong connections with the CIA, the United States international intelligence Agency, and was said to have received some $10 million from the agency for his government's anti-terrorist activities.
, the capital of the Arequipa Region
in southern Peru. His parents, who were of Greek descent and communists
, named him after Vladimir Lenin
, the first leader of the Soviet Union
.
In 1965, Montesinos graduated as a military cadet
at the US Army's
School of the Americas
in Panama
. A year later, he graduated from the Military School of Chorrillos
, in Lima, Peru.
of General Juan Velasco, Montesinos became a captain in the Peruvian army
. By 1973, he had been appointed to the role of aide to General Edgardo Mercado Jarrín, who served as both Prime Minister
and Chief of the Armed Forces, .
embassy in Lima. The documents included a list of weapons which Peru had purchased from the Soviet Union. Jarrin ordered the charges dropped.
That same year, Montesinos went on a two-week trip to Washington, D.C.
, paid for by the United States (US) government. Upon returning to Lima, he was arrested for having failed to obtain formal government permission to make the trip. The subsequent investigation revealed that top-secret documents had been found in his possession, and that he had photographed them and taken copies to the US Central Intelligence Agency
(CIA). Montesinos had travelled to the U.S. without authorization from army command, and had forged military documents
to allow him to complete the trip without being detained. He visited several foreign institutions as an official representative of the Peruvian army, also without authorization. Montesinos was dishonorably discharged from the military and sentenced to a year in military prison. This was a far less severe sentence than the customary death penalty that was the punishment for traitors during the military regime.
Years later, declassified
US State Department documents revealed the reason for the CIA's interest in Montesinos. In the 1970s, Peru was governed by the only left-wing regime in South America, a continent dominated by right-wing governments. Locked in the Cold War
with the Soviet Union and fearing its influence in the region, as well as that of the Communist government of Cuba, the US was seeking information about activities in Peru. Montesinos knew about a potential attack against Peru's southern long-time rival, Chile
, then ruled by dictator Augusto Pinochet
, an ally of the U.S. The operation, to be backed by the Cuba
n military, had the objective of recovering the territory Peru had lost after the War of the Pacific
.
in Lima. He received his law diploma only three months later, through fraudulent means. Book No. 24 of the University of San Marcos Office of Records, where Montesino's graduation would be noted, has disappeared from the Office. Montesino's undergraduate thesis and other materials related to his academic record have never been produced.
On August 15, 1978, Montesinos used his degree to register as a lawyer with the Superior Court of Lima. Ten days later, on August 25, 1978, he became a member of the Lima bar association
. He became notorious for representing a number of Colombian and Peruvian members of the illegal drug trade
, as well as police officers accused of being involved in drug trafficking. Between 1978 and 1979, he represented Colombian drug lords Evaristo "Papá Doc" Porras Ardila and Jaime Tamayo. In addition, he acted as guarantor on Tamayo's lease of several offices and warehouses used to manufacture cocaine
.
Between 1980 and 1983, Montesinos revealed sensitive information related to military wiretapping and assassinations to the newspaper Kausachum, run by Augusto Zimmerman, ex-spokesperson of deposed president Juan Velasco Alvarado
. General Carlos Briceño, the Commander of the Peruvian Army, re-opened the investigation into Montesino's alleged treason.
Montesinos fled to Ecuador
, where in 1984 he revealed information to the Ecuadorian Army
about Peru's military weapons purchases. The investigation was closed that year in order to "protect institutional image", and Montesinos was allowed to return to Peru.
Through his position, he came to have virtually unlimited power within Peru. By promoting his former classmates into top positions, Montesinos came to control the Peruvian Armed Forces
. During the course of the decade, he established a network of corruption that permeated media, business, political parties, and government. Toward the end of the Fujimori years, it was reported that Montesinos' tax records indicated he was making $600,000 a year, even though his official salary was $18,000.
known as the Grupo Colina
, part of the National Intelligence Service, which was thought to have been responsible for the Barrios Altos massacre
and the La Cantuta massacre
, actions intended to repress the Shining Path (Senderoso Luminoso), the major Communist insurgency that had been operating since the 1980s.
Four officers who were tortured during interrogation after plotting a coup d'état
against Fujimori in November 1992 later stated that Montesinos took an active part in torturing them. On March 16, 1998, former Peruvian Army Intelligence Agent Luisa Zanatta accused Montesinos of ordering illegal wiretaps of leading politicians and journalists. Zanatta also said that army intelligence agents had killed fellow agent Mariella Barreto Riofano because she gave a magazine information about human rights violations, as well as the location of bodies from the La Cantuta massacre. Zanatta said that in early 1997, Barreto had told her that she was part of the Grupo Colina death squad responsible for the La Cantuta massacre. Barreto's body was found by a roadside on March 29, 1997 and showed evidence of torture before death and mutilation.
In April 1997, Baruch Ivcher's Frecuencia Latina
Channel 2 broadcast allegations by Peruvian Army Intelligence agent Leonor La Rosa that she was tortured by intelligence agents. (Her testimony was later brought into question or proved false.)
On July 14, 1997, the government legally stripped Ivcher, a native Israeli
, of his Peruvian nationality for supposed offenses against the government. In September control of Channel 2 was given to minority shareholders more sympathetic to the government. In response, former United Nations Secretary-General
Javier Pérez de Cuéllar
said, "Peru is no longer a democracy. We are now a country headed by an authoritarian regime."
US policy was aimed at preserving the achievements of the Fujimori regime, while ending its excesses. Continuing political unrest in Peru would have represented a serious problem as US operations against the FARC
in Colombia got under way. Peru was needed as a base of operations and a defensive backstop against guerrillas
based in Colombia's south, not far from the Peruvian border.
n narco-traffickers, the CIA paid Montesinos's intelligence organization $1 million a year for 10 years to fight drug trafficking.
Demetrio Chávez Peñaherrera, known as "El Vaticano", testified that Montesinos was a protector of drug traffickers. In a drug trafficking trial on August 16, 1996, Chávez Peñaherrera stated that he had bribed members of the Peruvian Armed Forces and Montesinos, as the effective chief of the Peruvian Intelligence Service (SIN), to be able to operate freely in Campanilla, a jungle area of the Huallaga
region. Recordings of radio communications presented during the trial showed that members of the army had let Chávez's organization operate freely in the Huallaga region in exchange for bribes. During certain appearances in the court, Chávez appeared drugged and maybe tortured. After sentencing, while in prison, Chávez talked to the press and revealed that Montesinos said to him at one point that he "did some work" with Pablo Escobar
, leader of the Medellín Cartel
.
Montesinos was paid US$50,000 a month during 1991 and 1992. As proof, the government presented recordings during Chávez's trial of radio communications between his drug traffickers and members of the Armed Forces attesting to bribery of Montesinos. In addition, Chávez said that retired general Nicolás de Bari Hermoza, the ex-president of the Armed Forces Joint Command, and the ex-President Alberto Fujimori
, both had complete knowledge of the illicit acts of Montesinos.
, the arms were airlifted from Jordan via Peru, to the FARC insurgent
guerrillas
in southern Colombia
.
Montesinos claimed the credit for uncovering the arms smuggling, which involved upwards of 10,000 Kalashnikov assault rifles. Jordan
rejected the Peruvian version of events, insisting the shipments were legitimate government-to-government deals. Evidence emerged which pointed to Montesinos having orchestrated the gun-running operation rather than dismantling it. A senior Peruvian general was found to have participated in the deal, and another principal participant was a government contractor. He had signed at least eleven deals with the Fujimori regime, most to provide supplies to the Peruvian military.
According to one report, a group of military officers angered by Montesinos's apparent role in the arms deal broke into his offices and stole the video that was subsequently broadcast. Because of the arms deal, Montesinos lost the support of the US, which attached high strategic importance to crushing the FARC.
In following months, some of the most infamous "Vladi-videos" were released. In one, owners of Channel 2 are offered USD
$500,000 a month to ban appearances of the political opposition on their channel. Another shows Channel 4 owners getting $1.5 million a month for similar cooperation. Others show Montesinos counting out $350,000 in cash to Channel 5's proprietor, and the owner of Channel 9's receiving $50,000 to cancel an investigative series called SIN censura (Uncensored). In June 2001, the Venezuela
n government arrested Montesinos in Caracas
and extradited him back to Peru. He is on trial.
maximum-security prison naval base (which was built under his orders during the 1990s) and is facing sixty-three charges that range from drug trafficking to murder
. The lengthy series of court cases in Lima in which he is being tried is revealing the scale of the corruption during the Fujimori administration.
In 1998 the government purchased three new MiG-29
fighter planes from Russia
, for which it paid USD $300 million, although observers say the true cost of the planes is only around $100 million. Following subsequent international investigations of the sale, the government of Italy
issued an arrest warrant for Yevgeny Ananyev, former general director of the government-owned company Rosvooruzhenie. Ananyev was accused of money laundering with Montesinos by diverting $18 million through Swiss and Italian banks after overseeing the sale of the jet fighters via Belarus
.
Montesinos was convicted of embezzlement, illegally assumption of his post as intelligence chief, abuse of power
, influence peddling and bribing TV stations. Those charges carried sentences of between five and fifteen years each, but Peruvian prison sentences are served concurrently, so prosecutors continued to pursue him on additional charges. He was acquitted of two specific charges of corruption and conspiracy related to the mayor of Callao, whom he was alleged to have helped evade drug-trafficking charges.
In August 2004, U.S. officials returned to Peru $20 million in funds embezzled by Montesinos; it had been deposited in U.S. banks by two men working for him. Prime Minister Carlos Ferrero
and other prosecutors believed that the total amount embezzeled by Montesinos during his tenure at the National Intelligence Service surpassed one billion dollars, most of which was deposited in foreign banks.
In October 2004 Wilmer Yarleque Ordinola, 44, was apprehended in Virginia
in the US and convicted of immigration
fraud
. He had been working as a construction laborer without papers. The Peruvian government sought his extradition as an alleged member of Montesino's Grupa Colina and responsible for 26-35 of the 7,260 deaths or "disappearances" which the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (Peru)
attributed to the group. In October 2004 Yarleque was being held by the U.S. Marshals in Alexandria, Virginia
. The suspect was initially granted a writ of habeas corpus
, as he argued that he could not be extradited for political offenses committed for the government, but the US Fourth US Circuit Court of Appeals reversed that decision in 2005, opening the way for his extradition.
Montesinos was sentenced in September 2006 to a 20-year prison term for his direct involvement in an illegal arms deal to provide 10,000 assault weapons to Colombian rebels. Tribunal judges made their ruling based on evidence that placed Montesinos at the center of an intricate web of negotiations designed to transport assault rifles from Jordan to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia FARC.
In 2007 Montesinos was on trial for allegedly ordering the extra-judicial killings of the MRTA hostage-takers during the 1997 Japanese embassy hostage crisis
. The former chief of the armed forces, Nicolas de Bari Hermoza, and retired Colonel Roberto Huaman are also charged with ordering the extrajudicial execution of the 14 rebels. This action followed the government's commando
raid in April to free the more than 70 diplomats who had been held hostage for more than four months in the Japanese embassy. The Peruvian special forces’ recapture resulted in the deaths of one hostage, two commandos and all of the MRTA
rebels. The former Japanese political attaché Hidetaka Ogura, one of the hostages freed from the Embassy, stated that he saw at least three of the MRTA
rebels captured alive. If convicted, Montesinos and the two former military officers face up to 20 years in prison.
Peru
Peru , officially the Republic of Peru , is a country in western South America. It is bordered on the north by Ecuador and Colombia, on the east by Brazil, on the southeast by Bolivia, on the south by Chile, and on the west by the Pacific Ocean....
's intelligence
Intelligence (information gathering)
Intelligence assessment is the development of forecasts of behaviour or recommended courses of action to the leadership of an organization, based on a wide range of available information sources both overt and covert. Assessments are developed in response to requirements declared by the leadership...
service, Servicio de Inteligencia Nacional
National Intelligence Service (Peru)
The National Intelligence Service was an intelligence agency of the Government of Peru. The agency was disbanded by Alberto Fujimori after its de facto chief, Vladimiro Montesinos, was caught paying bribes to major political, military and media figures. Fujimori later pleaded guilty to charges...
(SIN), under President Alberto Fujimori
Alberto Fujimori
Alberto Fujimori Fujimori served as President of Peru from 28 July 1990 to 17 November 2000. A controversial figure, Fujimori has been credited with the creation of Fujimorism, uprooting terrorism in Peru and restoring its macroeconomic stability, though his methods have drawn charges of...
. In 2000, secret videos, which he had recorded, were televised that showed his bribing an elected congressman to leave the opposition and join the Fujimorist side of Congress. The ensuing scandal caused Montesinos to flee the country and hastened the resignation of Fujimori.
Subsequent investigations revealed Montesinos to be at the centre of a vast web of illegal activities, including embezzlement
Embezzlement
Embezzlement is the act of dishonestly appropriating or secreting assets by one or more individuals to whom such assets have been entrusted....
, graft
Political corruption
Political corruption is the use of legislated powers by government officials for illegitimate private gain. Misuse of government power for other purposes, such as repression of political opponents and general police brutality, is not considered political corruption. Neither are illegal acts by...
, gunrunning
Gunrunning
Arms trafficking, also known as gunrunning, is the illegal trafficking or smuggling of contraband weapons or ammunition.The 1997 Report of the UN Panel of Governmental Experts on Small Arms provides a more refined and precise definition, which has become internationally accepted...
, and drug trafficking. He has been tried, convicted and sentenced for numerous charges. Montesinos had strong connections with the CIA, the United States international intelligence Agency, and was said to have received some $10 million from the agency for his government's anti-terrorist activities.
Early years and education
Vladimiros Montesinos was born in the city of ArequipaArequipa
Arequipa is the capital city of the Arequipa Region in southern Peru. With a population of 836,859 it is the second most populous city of the country...
, the capital of the Arequipa Region
Arequipa Region
Arequipa is a region in southwestern Peru. It is bordered by the Ica, Ayacucho, Apurímac and Cusco regions on the north; the Puno Region on the east; the Moquegua Region on the south; and the Pacific Ocean on the west...
in southern Peru. His parents, who were of Greek descent and communists
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
, named him after Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and communist politician who led the October Revolution of 1917. As leader of the Bolsheviks, he headed the Soviet state during its initial years , as it fought to establish control of Russia in the Russian Civil War and worked to create a...
, the first leader of the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
.
In 1965, Montesinos graduated as a military cadet
Cadet
A cadet is a trainee to become an officer in the military, often a person who is a junior trainee. The term comes from the term "cadet" for younger sons of a noble family.- Military context :...
at the US Army's
United States Army
The United States Army is the main branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for land-based military operations. It is the largest and oldest established branch of the U.S. military, and is one of seven U.S. uniformed services...
School of the Americas
Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation
The Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation , formerly the United States Army School of the Americas is a United States Department of Defense educational and training facility at Fort Benning near Columbus, Georgia in the United States...
in Panama
Panama
Panama , officially the Republic of Panama , is the southernmost country of Central America. Situated on the isthmus connecting North and South America, it is bordered by Costa Rica to the northwest, Colombia to the southeast, the Caribbean Sea to the north and the Pacific Ocean to the south. The...
. A year later, he graduated from the Military School of Chorrillos
Chorrillos
Chorrillos is a district of the Lima Province in Peru and part of the city of Lima. It gets its name from the Spanish word for "trickle of water"...
, in Lima, Peru.
Career
By the early 1970s, during the leftist military juntaMilitary dictatorship
A military dictatorship is a form of government where in the political power resides with the military. It is similar but not identical to a stratocracy, a state ruled directly by the military....
of General Juan Velasco, Montesinos became a captain in the Peruvian army
Peruvian Army
The Peruvian Army is the branch of the Peruvian Armed Forces tasked with safeguarding the independence, sovereignty and integrity of national territory on land through military force. Additional missions include assistance in safeguarding internal security, conducting disaster relief operations...
. By 1973, he had been appointed to the role of aide to General Edgardo Mercado Jarrín, who served as both Prime Minister
Prime minister
A prime minister is the most senior minister of cabinet in the executive branch of government in a parliamentary system. In many systems, the prime minister selects and may dismiss other members of the cabinet, and allocates posts to members within the government. In most systems, the prime...
and Chief of the Armed Forces, .
1976 spying scandal
In 1976, Major Jose Fernandez Salvatteci of the Military Intelligence Service ( (SIE) charged Montesinos with the crimes of spying and treason, accusing him of delivering military documents to the United StatesUnited States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
embassy in Lima. The documents included a list of weapons which Peru had purchased from the Soviet Union. Jarrin ordered the charges dropped.
That same year, Montesinos went on a two-week trip to Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
, paid for by the United States (US) government. Upon returning to Lima, he was arrested for having failed to obtain formal government permission to make the trip. The subsequent investigation revealed that top-secret documents had been found in his possession, and that he had photographed them and taken copies to the US Central Intelligence Agency
Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government. It is an executive agency and reports directly to the Director of National Intelligence, responsible for providing national security intelligence assessment to senior United States policymakers...
(CIA). Montesinos had travelled to the U.S. without authorization from army command, and had forged military documents
Identity document forgery
Identity document forgery is the process by which identity documents issued by governing bodies are copied and/or modified by persons not authorized to create such documents or engage in such modifications, for the purpose of deceiving those who would view the documents about the identity or status...
to allow him to complete the trip without being detained. He visited several foreign institutions as an official representative of the Peruvian army, also without authorization. Montesinos was dishonorably discharged from the military and sentenced to a year in military prison. This was a far less severe sentence than the customary death penalty that was the punishment for traitors during the military regime.
Years later, declassified
Declassified
Declassified is an American television series produced by Ten Worlds Productions on The History Channel that originally aired on November 9, 2004. The series takes viewers inside vaults and archives around the world to reveal the untold stories of modern history...
US State Department documents revealed the reason for the CIA's interest in Montesinos. In the 1970s, Peru was governed by the only left-wing regime in South America, a continent dominated by right-wing governments. Locked in the Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
with the Soviet Union and fearing its influence in the region, as well as that of the Communist government of Cuba, the US was seeking information about activities in Peru. Montesinos knew about a potential attack against Peru's southern long-time rival, Chile
Chile
Chile ,officially the Republic of Chile , is a country in South America occupying a long, narrow coastal strip between the Andes mountains to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, and the Drake Passage in the far...
, then ruled by dictator Augusto Pinochet
Augusto Pinochet
Augusto José Ramón Pinochet Ugarte, more commonly known as Augusto Pinochet , was a Chilean army general and dictator who assumed power in a coup d'état on 11 September 1973...
, an ally of the U.S. The operation, to be backed by the Cuba
Cuba
The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...
n military, had the objective of recovering the territory Peru had lost after the War of the Pacific
War of the Pacific
The War of the Pacific took place in western South America from 1879 through 1883. Chile fought against Bolivia and Peru. Despite cooperation among the three nations in the war against Spain, disputes soon arose over the mineral-rich Peruvian provinces of Tarapaca, Tacna, and Arica, and the...
.
After military life
In February 1978, Montesinos was freed after two years in jail. He was given work by his cousin Sergio Cardenal Montesinos, a lawyer who persuaded him to pursue a degree in law. In April of the same year, Montesinos applied to the National University of San MarcosNational University of San Marcos
The National University of San Marcos is the most important and respected higher-education institution in Peru. Its main campus, the University City, is located in Lima...
in Lima. He received his law diploma only three months later, through fraudulent means. Book No. 24 of the University of San Marcos Office of Records, where Montesino's graduation would be noted, has disappeared from the Office. Montesino's undergraduate thesis and other materials related to his academic record have never been produced.
On August 15, 1978, Montesinos used his degree to register as a lawyer with the Superior Court of Lima. Ten days later, on August 25, 1978, he became a member of the Lima bar association
Bar association
A bar association is a professional body of lawyers. Some bar associations are responsible for the regulation of the legal profession in their jurisdiction; others are professional organizations dedicated to serving their members; in many cases, they are both...
. He became notorious for representing a number of Colombian and Peruvian members of the illegal drug trade
Illegal drug trade
The illegal drug trade is a global black market, dedicated to cultivation, manufacture, distribution and sale of those substances which are subject to drug prohibition laws. Most jurisdictions prohibit trade, except under license, of many types of drugs by drug prohibition laws.A UN report said the...
, as well as police officers accused of being involved in drug trafficking. Between 1978 and 1979, he represented Colombian drug lords Evaristo "Papá Doc" Porras Ardila and Jaime Tamayo. In addition, he acted as guarantor on Tamayo's lease of several offices and warehouses used to manufacture cocaine
Cocaine
Cocaine is a crystalline tropane alkaloid that is obtained from the leaves of the coca plant. The name comes from "coca" in addition to the alkaloid suffix -ine, forming cocaine. It is a stimulant of the central nervous system, an appetite suppressant, and a topical anesthetic...
.
Between 1980 and 1983, Montesinos revealed sensitive information related to military wiretapping and assassinations to the newspaper Kausachum, run by Augusto Zimmerman, ex-spokesperson of deposed president Juan Velasco Alvarado
Juan Velasco Alvarado
Juan Francisco Velasco Alvarado was a left-leaning Peruvian General who ruled Peru from 1968 to 1975 under the title of "President of the Revolutionary Government."- Early life :...
. General Carlos Briceño, the Commander of the Peruvian Army, re-opened the investigation into Montesino's alleged treason.
Montesinos fled to Ecuador
Ecuador
Ecuador , officially the Republic of Ecuador is a representative democratic republic in South America, bordered by Colombia on the north, Peru on the east and south, and by the Pacific Ocean to the west. It is one of only two countries in South America, along with Chile, that do not have a border...
, where in 1984 he revealed information to the Ecuadorian Army
Ecuadorian Army
The Ecuadorian Army is the land component of the Ecuadorian Armed Forces. Its 24,135 soldiers are sensibly deployed in relation to its military doctrine...
about Peru's military weapons purchases. The investigation was closed that year in order to "protect institutional image", and Montesinos was allowed to return to Peru.
The Fujimori years
Montesinos came to public notice again in 1990 when he defended Fujimori against accusations of fraudulent real estate dealings, during the presidential campaign, when Fujimori was an obscure candidate. The paperwork in the case disappeared and the charges were dropped. After Fujimori won the election on July 28, 1990, Montesinos became his chief advisor and the effective head of the intelligence service, whose acronym is SIN.Through his position, he came to have virtually unlimited power within Peru. By promoting his former classmates into top positions, Montesinos came to control the Peruvian Armed Forces
Military of Peru
The Peruvian Armed Forces are the military services of Peru, comprising independent Army, Navy and Air Force components. Their primary mission is to safeguard the country's independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity against any threat...
. During the course of the decade, he established a network of corruption that permeated media, business, political parties, and government. Toward the end of the Fujimori years, it was reported that Montesinos' tax records indicated he was making $600,000 a year, even though his official salary was $18,000.
Political repression
Montesinos is widely accused of threatening or harassing Fujimori's political opponents. Evidence proves he supervised a death squadDeath squad
A death squad is an armed military, police, insurgent, or terrorist squad that conducts extrajudicial killings, assassinations, and forced disappearances of persons as part of a war, insurgency or terror campaign...
known as the Grupo Colina
Grupo Colina
Grupo Colina was a paramilitary anti-communist death squad created in Peru that was active from 1990 until 1994, during the administration of Alberto Fujimori...
, part of the National Intelligence Service, which was thought to have been responsible for the Barrios Altos massacre
Barrios Altos massacre
The Barrios Altos massacre took place on 3 November 1991, in the Barrios Altos neighborhood of Lima, Peru. Fifteen people, including an eight-year-old child, were killed, and four more injured, by assailants who were later determined to be members of Grupo Colina, a death squad made up of members...
and the La Cantuta massacre
La Cantuta massacre
The La Cantuta massacre, in which a university professor and nine students from Lima's La Cantuta University were abducted by a military death squad and "disappeared", took place in Peru on 18 July 1992 during the presidency of Alberto Fujimori...
, actions intended to repress the Shining Path (Senderoso Luminoso), the major Communist insurgency that had been operating since the 1980s.
Four officers who were tortured during interrogation after plotting a coup d'état
Coup d'état
A coup d'état state, literally: strike/blow of state)—also known as a coup, putsch, and overthrow—is the sudden, extrajudicial deposition of a government, usually by a small group of the existing state establishment—typically the military—to replace the deposed government with another body; either...
against Fujimori in November 1992 later stated that Montesinos took an active part in torturing them. On March 16, 1998, former Peruvian Army Intelligence Agent Luisa Zanatta accused Montesinos of ordering illegal wiretaps of leading politicians and journalists. Zanatta also said that army intelligence agents had killed fellow agent Mariella Barreto Riofano because she gave a magazine information about human rights violations, as well as the location of bodies from the La Cantuta massacre. Zanatta said that in early 1997, Barreto had told her that she was part of the Grupo Colina death squad responsible for the La Cantuta massacre. Barreto's body was found by a roadside on March 29, 1997 and showed evidence of torture before death and mutilation.
Control of the media
During the Fujimori years, Montesinos gained extensive control of the media in Peru. By the end of 1999, Montesinos had editorial control over TV Channels 2, 4, 5, 9, and 13. TV Channel 7 was already state-owned. One of the country's two cable channels, Channel 10 had been secretly purchased by the armed forces. That left just one independent station in Peru: Channel N, a twenty-four-hour cable news outlet that reached barely 5% of the population.In April 1997, Baruch Ivcher's Frecuencia Latina
Frecuencia Latina
Frecuencia Latina , better known as Channel 2, is a Peruvian television network. The network was founded on May 31, 1962 by the Cavero Family Group who turned the station into a network filled with musical programs and variety shows...
Channel 2 broadcast allegations by Peruvian Army Intelligence agent Leonor La Rosa that she was tortured by intelligence agents. (Her testimony was later brought into question or proved false.)
On July 14, 1997, the government legally stripped Ivcher, a native Israeli
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
, of his Peruvian nationality for supposed offenses against the government. In September control of Channel 2 was given to minority shareholders more sympathetic to the government. In response, former United Nations Secretary-General
United Nations Secretary-General
The Secretary-General of the United Nations is the head of the Secretariat of the United Nations, one of the principal organs of the United Nations. The Secretary-General also acts as the de facto spokesperson and leader of the United Nations....
Javier Pérez de Cuéllar
Javier Pérez de Cuéllar
Javier Pérez de Cuéllar y de la Guerra is a Peruvian diplomat who served as the fifth Secretary-General of the United Nations from January 1, 1982 to December 31, 1991. He studied in Colegio San Agustín of Lima, and then at Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú. In 1995, he ran unsuccessfully...
said, "Peru is no longer a democracy. We are now a country headed by an authoritarian regime."
2000 Elections
The 2000 presidential election, following years of political violence, was controversial. A journalist claimed to have a videotape of Montesinos bribing election officials to fix the vote. The journalist claimed to have been kidnapped by secret police agents, who sawed his arm to the bone to get him to give up the tape. In view of such tactics, the Clinton administration threatened briefly not to recognize Fujimori's victory. It backed off from this threat, and pressured Fujimori's government to take action to root out abuses, including ousting Montesinos.US policy was aimed at preserving the achievements of the Fujimori regime, while ending its excesses. Continuing political unrest in Peru would have represented a serious problem as US operations against the FARC
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia
The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia – People's Army is a Marxist–Leninist revolutionary guerrilla organization based in Colombia which is involved in the ongoing Colombian armed conflict, currently involved in drug dealing and crimes against the civilians..FARC-EP is a peasant army which...
in Colombia got under way. Peru was needed as a base of operations and a defensive backstop against guerrillas
Guerrilla warfare
Guerrilla warfare is a form of irregular warfare and refers to conflicts in which a small group of combatants including, but not limited to, armed civilians use military tactics, such as ambushes, sabotage, raids, the element of surprise, and extraordinary mobility to harass a larger and...
based in Colombia's south, not far from the Peruvian border.
Drug traffic
Allegations circulated that Montesinos and Gen. Nicolás Hermoza Ríos, the chairman of Peru's joint chiefs of staff, were taking protection money from drug traffickers. Documents declassified later by the US government showed that in 1996 the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) was aware of the allegations. Despite evidence that Montesinos was in business with ColombiaColombia
Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia , is a unitary constitutional republic comprising thirty-two departments. The country is located in northwestern South America, bordered to the east by Venezuela and Brazil; to the south by Ecuador and Peru; to the north by the Caribbean Sea; to the...
n narco-traffickers, the CIA paid Montesinos's intelligence organization $1 million a year for 10 years to fight drug trafficking.
Demetrio Chávez Peñaherrera, known as "El Vaticano", testified that Montesinos was a protector of drug traffickers. In a drug trafficking trial on August 16, 1996, Chávez Peñaherrera stated that he had bribed members of the Peruvian Armed Forces and Montesinos, as the effective chief of the Peruvian Intelligence Service (SIN), to be able to operate freely in Campanilla, a jungle area of the Huallaga
Huallaga
Huallaga may refer to:*Locations in Peru:**Huallaga Province**Huallaga River**Huallaga Valley...
region. Recordings of radio communications presented during the trial showed that members of the army had let Chávez's organization operate freely in the Huallaga region in exchange for bribes. During certain appearances in the court, Chávez appeared drugged and maybe tortured. After sentencing, while in prison, Chávez talked to the press and revealed that Montesinos said to him at one point that he "did some work" with Pablo Escobar
Pablo Escobar
Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria was a Colombian drug lord. He was an elusive cocaine trafficker and rich and successful criminal. He owned numerous luxury residences, automobiles, and even airplanes...
, leader of the Medellín Cartel
Medellín Cartel
The Medellín Cartel was an organized network of "drug suppliers and smugglers" originating in the city of Medellín, Colombia. The drug cartel operated in Colombia, Bolivia, Peru, Central America, the United States, as well as Canada and Europe throughout the 1970s and 1980s. It was founded and...
.
Montesinos was paid US$50,000 a month during 1991 and 1992. As proof, the government presented recordings during Chávez's trial of radio communications between his drug traffickers and members of the Armed Forces attesting to bribery of Montesinos. In addition, Chávez said that retired general Nicolás de Bari Hermoza, the ex-president of the Armed Forces Joint Command, and the ex-President Alberto Fujimori
Alberto Fujimori
Alberto Fujimori Fujimori served as President of Peru from 28 July 1990 to 17 November 2000. A controversial figure, Fujimori has been credited with the creation of Fujimorism, uprooting terrorism in Peru and restoring its macroeconomic stability, though his methods have drawn charges of...
, both had complete knowledge of the illicit acts of Montesinos.
Downfall
Frequently, Montesinos secretly made videotape of his bribing individuals in his office, incriminating politicians, officials and military officers. His downfall appears to have been precipitated by the discovery of a major illegal arms shipment. Arranged by guerrilla leader Tomás Medina CaracasTomás Medina Caracas
Tomás Medina Caracas aka Tomás Molina Caracas aka Negro Acacio was a Colombian guerrilla member of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia considered by Colombian authorities the man in charge of the illegal drug trade business and the head of the Eastern Bloc's 16th Front of this rebel group...
, the arms were airlifted from Jordan via Peru, to the FARC insurgent
Insurgency
An insurgency is an armed rebellion against a constituted authority when those taking part in the rebellion are not recognized as belligerents...
guerrillas
Guerrilla warfare
Guerrilla warfare is a form of irregular warfare and refers to conflicts in which a small group of combatants including, but not limited to, armed civilians use military tactics, such as ambushes, sabotage, raids, the element of surprise, and extraordinary mobility to harass a larger and...
in southern Colombia
Colombia
Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia , is a unitary constitutional republic comprising thirty-two departments. The country is located in northwestern South America, bordered to the east by Venezuela and Brazil; to the south by Ecuador and Peru; to the north by the Caribbean Sea; to the...
.
Montesinos claimed the credit for uncovering the arms smuggling, which involved upwards of 10,000 Kalashnikov assault rifles. Jordan
Jordan
Jordan , officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan , Al-Mamlaka al-Urduniyya al-Hashemiyya) is a kingdom on the East Bank of the River Jordan. The country borders Saudi Arabia to the east and south-east, Iraq to the north-east, Syria to the north and the West Bank and Israel to the west, sharing...
rejected the Peruvian version of events, insisting the shipments were legitimate government-to-government deals. Evidence emerged which pointed to Montesinos having orchestrated the gun-running operation rather than dismantling it. A senior Peruvian general was found to have participated in the deal, and another principal participant was a government contractor. He had signed at least eleven deals with the Fujimori regime, most to provide supplies to the Peruvian military.
According to one report, a group of military officers angered by Montesinos's apparent role in the arms deal broke into his offices and stole the video that was subsequently broadcast. Because of the arms deal, Montesinos lost the support of the US, which attached high strategic importance to crushing the FARC.
The Vladi-videos
On 14 September 2000, Peruvian television broadcast a video of Montesinos giving a bribe to opposition congressman Alberto Kouri to support Fujimori's Perú 2000 party. The video caused Fujimori's remaining support to collapse, and immediately he announced the firing of Montesinos, dissolution of the intelligence service and new elections—in which he would not run. Shortly thereafter, Montesinos sought political asylum in Panama.In following months, some of the most infamous "Vladi-videos" were released. In one, owners of Channel 2 are offered USD
United States dollar
The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....
$500,000 a month to ban appearances of the political opposition on their channel. Another shows Channel 4 owners getting $1.5 million a month for similar cooperation. Others show Montesinos counting out $350,000 in cash to Channel 5's proprietor, and the owner of Channel 9's receiving $50,000 to cancel an investigative series called SIN censura (Uncensored). In June 2001, the Venezuela
Venezuela
Venezuela , officially called the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela , is a tropical country on the northern coast of South America. It borders Colombia to the west, Guyana to the east, and Brazil to the south...
n government arrested Montesinos in Caracas
Caracas
Caracas , officially Santiago de León de Caracas, is the capital and largest city of Venezuela; natives or residents are known as Caraquenians in English . It is located in the northern part of the country, following the contours of the narrow Caracas Valley on the Venezuelan coastal mountain range...
and extradited him back to Peru. He is on trial.
Trial
Montesinos is imprisoned at the CallaoCallao
Callao is the largest and most important port in Peru. The city is coterminous with the Constitutional Province of Callao, the only province of the Callao Region. Callao is located west of Lima, the country's capital, and is part of the Lima Metropolitan Area, a large metropolis that holds almost...
maximum-security prison naval base (which was built under his orders during the 1990s) and is facing sixty-three charges that range from drug trafficking to murder
Murder
Murder is the unlawful killing, with malice aforethought, of another human being, and generally this state of mind distinguishes murder from other forms of unlawful homicide...
. The lengthy series of court cases in Lima in which he is being tried is revealing the scale of the corruption during the Fujimori administration.
In 1998 the government purchased three new MiG-29
Mikoyan MiG-29
The Mikoyan MiG-29 is a fourth-generation jet fighter aircraft designed in the Soviet Union for an air superiority role. Developed in the 1970s by the Mikoyan design bureau, it entered service with the Soviet Air Force in 1983, and remains in use by the Russian Air Force as well as in many other...
fighter planes from Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
, for which it paid USD $300 million, although observers say the true cost of the planes is only around $100 million. Following subsequent international investigations of the sale, the government of Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
issued an arrest warrant for Yevgeny Ananyev, former general director of the government-owned company Rosvooruzhenie. Ananyev was accused of money laundering with Montesinos by diverting $18 million through Swiss and Italian banks after overseeing the sale of the jet fighters via Belarus
Belarus
Belarus , officially the Republic of Belarus, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe, bordered clockwise by Russia to the northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest. Its capital is Minsk; other major cities include Brest, Grodno , Gomel ,...
.
Montesinos was convicted of embezzlement, illegally assumption of his post as intelligence chief, abuse of power
Abuse of Power
Abuse of Power is a novel written by radio talk show host Michael Savage.- Plot :Jack Hatfield is a hardened former war correspondent who rose to national prominence for his insightful, provocative commentary...
, influence peddling and bribing TV stations. Those charges carried sentences of between five and fifteen years each, but Peruvian prison sentences are served concurrently, so prosecutors continued to pursue him on additional charges. He was acquitted of two specific charges of corruption and conspiracy related to the mayor of Callao, whom he was alleged to have helped evade drug-trafficking charges.
In August 2004, U.S. officials returned to Peru $20 million in funds embezzled by Montesinos; it had been deposited in U.S. banks by two men working for him. Prime Minister Carlos Ferrero
Carlos Ferrero
Carlos Ferrero Costa is currently a Peruvian Congressman as a member of Perú Posible representing the Province of Lima. He was the Prime Minister of Peru between December 2003 and August 2005....
and other prosecutors believed that the total amount embezzeled by Montesinos during his tenure at the National Intelligence Service surpassed one billion dollars, most of which was deposited in foreign banks.
In October 2004 Wilmer Yarleque Ordinola, 44, was apprehended in Virginia
Virginia
The Commonwealth of Virginia , is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Coast of the Southern United States. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" and sometimes the "Mother of Presidents" after the eight U.S. presidents born there...
in the US and convicted of immigration
Immigration
Immigration is the act of foreigners passing or coming into a country for the purpose of permanent residence...
fraud
Fraud
In criminal law, a fraud is an intentional deception made for personal gain or to damage another individual; the related adjective is fraudulent. The specific legal definition varies by legal jurisdiction. Fraud is a crime, and also a civil law violation...
. He had been working as a construction laborer without papers. The Peruvian government sought his extradition as an alleged member of Montesino's Grupa Colina and responsible for 26-35 of the 7,260 deaths or "disappearances" which the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (Peru)
Truth and Reconciliation Commission (Peru)
The Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission was established in 2001 after the fall of president Alberto Fujimori, to examine abuses committed during the 1980s and 1990s, when Peru was plagued by the worst political violence in the history of the republic...
attributed to the group. In October 2004 Yarleque was being held by the U.S. Marshals in Alexandria, Virginia
Alexandria, Virginia
Alexandria is an independent city in the Commonwealth of Virginia. As of 2009, the city had a total population of 139,966. Located along the Western bank of the Potomac River, Alexandria is approximately six miles south of downtown Washington, D.C.Like the rest of northern Virginia, as well as...
. The suspect was initially granted a writ of habeas corpus
Habeas corpus
is a writ, or legal action, through which a prisoner can be released from unlawful detention. The remedy can be sought by the prisoner or by another person coming to his aid. Habeas corpus originated in the English legal system, but it is now available in many nations...
, as he argued that he could not be extradited for political offenses committed for the government, but the US Fourth US Circuit Court of Appeals reversed that decision in 2005, opening the way for his extradition.
Montesinos was sentenced in September 2006 to a 20-year prison term for his direct involvement in an illegal arms deal to provide 10,000 assault weapons to Colombian rebels. Tribunal judges made their ruling based on evidence that placed Montesinos at the center of an intricate web of negotiations designed to transport assault rifles from Jordan to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia FARC.
In 2007 Montesinos was on trial for allegedly ordering the extra-judicial killings of the MRTA hostage-takers during the 1997 Japanese embassy hostage crisis
Japanese embassy hostage crisis
The Japanese embassy hostage crisis began on 17 December 1996 in Lima, Peru, when 14 members of the Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement took hostage hundreds of high-level diplomats, government and military officials and business executives who were attending a party at the official residence of...
. The former chief of the armed forces, Nicolas de Bari Hermoza, and retired Colonel Roberto Huaman are also charged with ordering the extrajudicial execution of the 14 rebels. This action followed the government's commando
Commando
In English, the term commando means a specific kind of individual soldier or military unit. In contemporary usage, commando usually means elite light infantry and/or special operations forces units, specializing in amphibious landings, parachuting, rappelling and similar techniques, to conduct and...
raid in April to free the more than 70 diplomats who had been held hostage for more than four months in the Japanese embassy. The Peruvian special forces’ recapture resulted in the deaths of one hostage, two commandos and all of the MRTA
MRTA
MRTA stands for:* Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement of Peru * Mass Rapid Transit Authority of Thailand...
rebels. The former Japanese political attaché Hidetaka Ogura, one of the hostages freed from the Embassy, stated that he saw at least three of the MRTA
MRTA
MRTA stands for:* Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement of Peru * Mass Rapid Transit Authority of Thailand...
rebels captured alive. If convicted, Montesinos and the two former military officers face up to 20 years in prison.
External links
- "Army Played 'A Key Role' In Departure Of Fujimori, Intelligence Service Scandals Rankled Peruvian Military" (Washington Post September 18, 2000)
- "Bribes, Lies, and Videotape in Peru" (Business Week February 2, 2001)
- "CIA Gave $10 Million to Peru's Ex-Spymaster" (July 3, 2001)
- Declassified United States NSA documents about Montesinos
- Profile of Vladimiro Montesinos (desaparecidos.org)
- "How to Subvert Democracy: Montesinos in Peru" (by John McMillan and Pablo Zoido, March 2004)
- "Montesinos, Fujimori, Toledo and Peru's future"
- "Peru, the disintegration of the Fujimori regime" (World Socialist website)
- "The Betrayal of Peru's Democracy: Montesinos as Fujimori's Svengali" (Covert Action Quarterly, Summer 1994)
- "'The Doctor' Divided U.S. Officials, CIA Defended Peruvian Against Human-Rights Accusations" (Washington Post, September 22, 2000)
- Montesinos: The end of the road (BBC News, 24 June 2001)
- "The Meaning of Montesinos"
- "The Spy who would rule Peru"
- "Videomania" (the Economist, February 8, 2001)
- "Borron y Manchas Nuevas: Documentos de inteligencia norteamericanos sobre Montesinos" (CaretasCaretasCaretas is a weekly newsmagazine published in Lima, Peru, renowned for its investigative journalism. It was founded in October 1950 by Doris Gibson and Francisco Igartua....
) (in Spanish) - http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/peru404/web.html"Montesinos's Web", PBS FRONTLINE/World October 2005. View streaming video of recordings secretly made by former Peruvian intelligence chief Vladimir Montesinos of the CIA station chief, a Peruvian Supreme Court judge and a high-ranking executive of a major U.S. mining company, the documentary itself, as well as Web exclusive features, interview transcripts, FOIA documents and a "gallery of players" involved in the protracted legal dispute over Yanacocha, one of the richest gold mines in the world.]