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Pinochet's lost millions: the UK connection

AFP / GETTY IMAGES

Santiago, 1988 Pinochet watches F-16 warplanes fly past. Much of his wealth came from military procurement Santiago, 1988 Pinochet watches F-16 warplanes fly past. Much of his wealth came from military procurement

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ILLEGITIMATE RULE BY TERROR
[info]budbutley wrote:
Sunday, 23 August 2009 at 04:05 am (UTC)
Enforced by a fierce secret police, of which the purpose was plunder. Naturally, it was highly profitable and the pseudo-success of a Chicago-School economics demonstration project bought the vile fool government support everywhere he went. One supposes he shed cash as he travelled. Who got that £50k when he was in the UK? Anyone we know?

You bet.
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Pinochet was our friend
[info]audie_woolgoose wrote:
Sunday, 23 August 2009 at 06:11 am (UTC)
Compare the current outcry from the USA over the release of al-Megrahi with the silence from that quarter when Pinochet was released by the UK government in 2000 on grounds of ill-health. (He lived another six years.) Clearly, the US government thought -- and the current administration still thinks -- that the victims of Pinochet's terrorist regime deserved their fate.
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blood money
[info]dimlocator44 wrote:
Sunday, 23 August 2009 at 07:37 am (UTC)
Another sickening case of corporate greed colluding with vile dictators.
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are you surprised!
[info]snowdonwatcher wrote:
Sunday, 23 August 2009 at 07:52 am (UTC)
I would not expect anyone to be very surprised at this. The British banking system is corrupt to the core & the Governement has allowed them to get on with it for far too long.

What would be good to see is the main individuals being named, but they will hide themselves behind others & get away with it as usual.

Britain under Thatcher, Bliar, Brown, it's all corporate greed & we know it!

Will it change? Not while there is money still to be made!
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The sun sets on the last banana republic
[info]fin_d_empire wrote:
Sunday, 23 August 2009 at 07:56 am (UTC)
The Yanks have lost all their Latin American banana republics to Chavez's Bolivarian revolution, which has now, through the former Yank-backed military dictatorship Chile, laid out all the dirty linen of the last Yank banana republic, the UK. This is the Bolivarian revolution coming to bite Britain in the ass, exposing its intimately politically-connected "financial sector" to be a nest of money-laundering tax-dodging crooks, on top of being the gamblers and swindlers we knew they were since the November crash.
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[info]jorgec wrote:
Sunday, 23 August 2009 at 08:13 am (UTC)
Is there any dictatorship that the british government and w...bankers aren't involved in?
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You don't say he wouldn't prosecute him... because we had a financial interest and dirty secrets!!
[info]old_green wrote:
Sunday, 23 August 2009 at 08:22 am (UTC)
Would that make the actions of our government, in releasing him, criminal collusion?

The Swiss had to give back Nazi money - will we have to give back Chilean money?
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Re: You don't say he wouldn't prosecute him... because we had a financial interest and dirty secrets
[info]lkdamo wrote:
Sunday, 23 August 2009 at 01:23 pm (UTC)
Only if you could prove any of them knew, he had the money here.
If so yes as he had already committed a crime here by putting his money in this country against an existing order which theUK was bound by.

As for giving the money back, if it can be traced it will have to go back.
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[info]frenchpete wrote:
Sunday, 23 August 2009 at 08:46 am (UTC)
The Pinochet example of how the financial sector, banks, advisors and dodgy governments (UK), aid and abet corruption is truely frightening. In addition to Pinochet, the fortune ammased by Mobutu would go a long way to purging third world debt.
Our corrupt institutions don't only help dictators, but more threatningly they help organised crime.
Is there a way out if this? Will crime banks and countries which activly support money laundering ever be seriously shackled? I think not because, this would mean not only the sunny corrupt countries such as the Caymen Islands being investigated, but also Switzerland, Luxemburg, The Isle of Man, Channel Islands.....So it would seem that Mrs and Mrs average and their children will have to live in a world where everyone knows that CRIME PAYS!
Draw your own conclusions about what that means for society and its modern day values
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Pinochet
[info]tarlytoot wrote:
Sunday, 23 August 2009 at 09:18 am (UTC)
Nothing new here then. Just more proof that the real fascist liars and thieves are none other than our bankers,our government, our royal family, our industrialists ourselves.
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money laundering of Pinochet's loot is entirely predictable
[info]cronyblatcher wrote:
Sunday, 23 August 2009 at 11:36 am (UTC)
in the banana republic that also did Enron's money laundering - and that involved in the looting of both British and Russian natural resources to name only a few instances of many. At the same time, if you are a British student opening a first bank account, you are obliged to prove beyond reasonable doubt to a flourishing pseud 'anti-money-laundering' industry, that you are not "money laundering".
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British Banks, Holier-than-Swiss-Banks
[info]boeticia wrote:
Sunday, 23 August 2009 at 12:29 pm (UTC)
This must have been the reason that Pinochet was not arrested and detained when he was in Great
Britain, in London. . He, or rather, his corruptly earned money, was kept in British banks.
Shades of Swityerland secret bank accounts scandals!!!
So what's to be done now? Will the money be given to the Chilean government?
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Re: British Banks, Holier-than-Swiss-Banks
[info]boeticia wrote:
Sunday, 23 August 2009 at 12:52 pm (UTC)
That loot should definitely be sent back to the Chilean government. Pinochet's victims' families should
be given compensations for their loss of their loved ones. The rest of the money the state certainly can use, in these days of international money crisis for the good of the country. Britain has no right to
even one cent of it, or the profits made from it, and the British government should show its high
morals by forcing the banks and financial institutions involved to return to the country Pinochet and his
likes, had wronged.
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Re: British Banks, Holier-than-Swiss-Banks
[info]chanch5 wrote:
Sunday, 23 August 2009 at 01:46 pm (UTC)
The thing is, as far as I know, the Pinochet privatisation model is not being challenged by the current Chilean government

(Furthermore, politics in Chile are still run on the basis of Pinochet's undemocratic 1980s constitution. Interestingly the Chilean judge who led most cases against Pinochet in Chile, Juan Guzman, has now moved into politics and is now among thsoe leading a recent move to seek a referendum to free the country from that particular vestige of the dictatorship, very much like what Manuel Zelaya was trying to do in Honduras not so long ago.)
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Re: British Banks, Holier-than-Swiss-Banks
[info]boeticia wrote:
Sunday, 23 August 2009 at 06:49 pm (UTC)
One wonders why Chile isn't trying hard to get the money. unless there's a secret agreement between
that government and Britain. Perhaps discreetly, without much hullabaloo. Whatever the reason,
as long as the money goes back to Chile where it belongs.
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Plus Ca Change
[info]littleglimmer wrote:
Sunday, 23 August 2009 at 12:52 pm (UTC)
Isn't this so deliciously topical? A story about a man who was dogged for years by very murky legal matters, a man who was released from detention by the UK on terminal health grounds, a man around whom stories of political deals swirl? A story of financial corruption on a global scale, a story of state terror and freelance terror?
But it's the differences that really show the duplicity. Thatcher bent over backwards to protect and praise this vile shit. We may ask was he a source of funds for Thatcher's 'Foundation' (formed in 1991)?
Why don't we line up Pinochet, Saddam, Gaddafi, Ahmadinejad, Cheney, Bush, bin Laden, Mugabe? Let's see what killing they have been responsible for and compare how the US Empire portrays them.
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Scum
[info]hiragani wrote:
Sunday, 23 August 2009 at 02:18 pm (UTC)
British bankers and British Governments are just scum.
Britain is now the dirtiest financial centre in the world.
I for one feel ashamed.
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