MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Judge questions Pinochet about hidden millions

A Chilean judge has questioned Augusto Pinochet, the former dictator who has escaped prosecution on atrocities charges but is now facing corruption allegations, about millions of dollars he kept hidden in secret U.S. bank accounts, judiciary officials said Friday.

The officials did not specify the date or the place where the 88-year-old Pinochet was interrogated by Judge Sergio Muñoz.

The sources confirmed a report that first appeared Friday in the Siete +7 weekly, which said the interrogation took place after the judge questioned Pinochet's five children and his wife, Lucia Hiriart.

This was the second time the former dictator had to answer to a Chilean judge, having previously appeared before Judge Juan Guzman Tapia, who tried him for his alleged role in 75 death squad killings in late 1973.

That case against Pinochet was dismissed in July 2002, after he was deemed mentally unfit for trial due to "dementia," the result of two slight strokes in recent years. The diagnosis helped him avoid prosecution in several other cases of human rights violations.

Judge Muñoz has been in charge of this most recent case - commonly known as "Pinocuentas," a combination of the ex-strongman's name and the Spanish word for accounts - since July 21, when the attorney general's office filed a criminal complaint against him for illicit enrichment.

According to a U.S. Senate panel probe into banking irregularities, Pinochet drew anywhere from $4 million to $8 million from his accounts in Washington-based Riggs Bank between 1998 and 2002, part of a fortune estimated to range from $50 million to $100 million.

Though Pinochet's statements to Judge Muñoz remain undisclosed; the weekly reported that the magistrate did not find a senile speaker, noting that the octogenarian would have responded "like a very lucid person for his 88 years." Pablo Rodriguez, head of Pinochet's defense team, met with Judge Muñoz for an hour-and-a-half Friday, along with Hiriart.

Rodriguez said all of Pinochet's funds "have been acquired by perfectly legal means."