MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

60 billion US dollars fled Argentina

According to an Argentine Congressional committee preliminary report, over 60 billion US dollars fled from Argentina between 1992 and 2001. Worse even, in spite of current legislation the report indicates that most of the money managed to evade Central Bank and other financial and tax institutions controls, while the banking system wasn't particularly willing to collaborate with the investigation.

The multi-party Special Investigating Committee has been working for over a year in the report trying to determine how such a huge volume of money left Argentina particularly in 2001 when the situation blew out of all normal proportions and finished with the collapse and resignation of the President De la Rúa administration.

In 2001 according to Congressional figures, 14, 977 billion US dollars fled from Argentina, but Central Bank figures are more modest, 12,5 billion US dollars. The Committee worked with data supplied by 58 resident banks in Argentina, equivalent to 70% of the financial system assets.

The report was able to determine that in just one day, November 30, 2001, just a few hours after a freeze on all banking assets was decreed, 143 million US dollars in 857 different operations left the Argentina.

Although during most of the nineties the free movement of capital was not illegal in Argentina, the report found out that there was virtually no checking, by financial, taxing institutions or the Central Bank, of the legality or illegality of the money transfers. The "know your client" policy, that has become a world banking standard, apparently only existed in paper given the "efficiency" of the system established by different institutions to oil the way for the fleeing money, much of it apparently tax evasion.

The Congressional report points out that in spite of strict regulations regarding money laundering and other illicit activities, banks virtually did not report suspicious transactions and the Argentine Central Bank didn't pursue them, even when entitled and forced to do so.

Furthermore the Central Bank facilitated the financial system access to foreign credit "generating a greater fragility and exposure, while not demanding banks and other institutions to comply with regulations", reads the report.

"When we began investigating over a year ago, a majority of banks at the beginning refused to collaborate alleging confidentiality of the information involved, and we had to request the Treasury Secretary to intervene", recalls one of the members of the Committee.

Another extraordinary finding was that at least a third of transactions in 2001 involving sending money overseas, were done in a manner that made identification by taxing authorities virtually impossible.

"We discovered that some transfers were done using a dead person's names and even 14 year old minors", said César Di Cola president of the investigating committee.