MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Major bribe scandal shakes Argentina

Former Argentine president Fernando de la Rua denied this Saturday allegations from a former congressional official who claims his administration bribed senators with millions of dollars to gain approval in 2000 of a contentious labour reform bill.

"I'm surprised. It is all absolutely false, at least what I've read and heard," said Mr. De la Rua in an interview with the Buenos Aires daily Clarin.

Mr. De la Rúa was forced to resign in December 2001 in the midst of social upheaval and collapse of the Argentine economy.

Mario Pontaquarto, former Senate legislative secretary and a close aid of the De la Rúa administration admitted last Friday having been sent to bribe several Senators with 4.3 million US dollars to pass a law relaxing employment regulations.

However Mr. De la Rua's denial was discarded by his former vice president at the time of the alleged bribe-paying, Carlos Alvarez who confirmed in comments to the local media that the Executive branch distributed payments among corrupt lawmakers.

"There are no longer any excuses for failing to make progress in the (judicial) investigation," insisted former Vice President Carlos Alvarez following Mr. Pontaquarto's revelations.

Mr. Alvarez resigned as vice president in October 2000 over differences with then president De la Rua over the bribery allegations in the Senate and the need to investigate the claims.

Alvarez was quoted by the Pagina/12 newspaper Saturday as confirming that "an illicit association" existed in the Senate involved in "buying and selling" of laws. He said legislators from both De la Rua's Radical Civic Union and the currently ruling Peronist Party were involved in the illegal dealings.

"The testimony of Pontaquarto is crucial because it puts names to what people knew existed," Alvarez told Pagina/12.

Mr. Alvarez added that Mr De la Rua "is the most politically responsible for what happened then". Nevertheless Mr. De la Rua insisted on his innocence.

"I did not take part in any stage of the negotiation of that (labour reform) bill", stressed the former president to La Nación, claiming to be a "persecution victim" of the left since he was forced out of office.

Mr. Pontaquarto revealed that in the early morning of April 18, 2000, he took two briefcases packed with the equivalent of 4.3 million US dollars in Argentine pesos from the Intelligence Service headquarters, SIDE, to the home of one of the Senators. SIDE responds directly to the Executive branch and at the time was under the command of a close friend and councillor of Mr. De la Rúa, businessman Fernando de Santibañes.

"I went to SIDE. De Santibañes told me - we were alone - that the 'operation' was going to be conducted that same night. It was a Tuesday and the (labour reform) law was up for a vote on Wednesday...

"Then, from a vault, like the ones in banks, with steel doors, they took the money out in two briefcases," Pontaquarto said.

Apparently Senator Jose Genoud, a member of De la Rua's coalition, and Antonio Alasino, of the then opposition Peronist Party, handled the distribution of the bribe money.

Buenos Aires Mayor Aníbal Ibarra, a former prosecutor to whom Mr. Pontaquarto first confided all the information, said that the briefcases had been taken to Senator Juan Cantarero's home where the money was "divided and put into envelopes" with the names of the alleged "beneficiaries" including the names of Senators Ricardo Branda, Remo Constanzo, Carlos Verna, Jose Luis Gioja and Carlos Tell.

Mr. Gioja last Wednesday took office as governor of the north western province of San Juan; Mr. Verna became governor of the central province of La Pampa, and Mr. Branda is on the board of the Argentine Central Bank.