MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Judge freezes Menem's assets

A judge yesterday froze all the assets of former president Carlos Menem, who is being investigated on charges of hiding more than 600,000 dollars from tax authorities in a Swiss account, court officials said.

The judge wants a hold put on 1.5 million pesos worth of Menem's assets, saying he failed to declare the Swiss account for tax purposes. Menem says his assets are not worth that much.

Federal Judge Norberto Oyarbide banned the sale of all Menem's assets in Argentina. He said authorities would determine the value of assets Menem has reportedly not declared to the tax agency, including a luxurious property in the city of Buenos Aires and three airplanes.

Menem, whose 1989-1999 presidency was tainted by accusations of rampant corruption, has acknowledged in a CNN interview that he had a Swiss bank account.

The 73-year-old former leader has said the account is legal and was opened in 1986 with some 200,000 dollars from a settlement he won after being jailed as a political prisoner during the last military dictatorship. He has said that the money, with interest, eventually grew to about 600,000.

He was charged with tax fraud in December for failing to declare the account. Menem says he has committed no crime.

An appeals court has already indicted Menem on charges of maliciously omitting to mention the account in his sworn statement of assets. The court ordered Oyarbide to slap a 1.5-million peso lien on the assets of the former head of state but Menem appeared in court in his home-province La Rioja and said that he did not have enough assets to cover the lien.

Oyarbide ordered court officials to investigate whether Menem owns a luxurious property at the block of 11 de September 1700 in the city neighbourhood of Belgrano and three airplanes.

If found guilty by trial of malicious omission of assets in a sworn statement of assets, Menem would not be facing a high prison sentence 15 days to two years, according to the law but could be banned for life from serving in public office again.

Argentine judges met with officials in Switzerland last week to discuss sharing information on suspected money-laundering cases, some of which name Menem.

One investigation involves allegations that Menem took bribes relating to illegal arms sales to Croatia and Ecuador and the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish community centre, Swiss officials said. Menem was under house arrest for more than five months in 2001 and was only released after a Supreme Court ruling benefited his legal situation in the arms case, but it is still being investigated.

Menem ran for president in last years elections and won the first round by a narrow margin, but he quit the second round as polls showed he was heading toward a humiliating defeat by then Santa Cruz governor Nestor Kirchner, who won by default. Since then, Menem has insisted that he will have another go at the presidency in 2007.