MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Riggs Bank to create Pinochet victim fund.

A Spanish judge on Friday dropped fraud and money laundering charges filed against Riggs Bank in the United States in connection with millions of dollars deposited there by former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet.

National Court Judge Baltasar Garzon also estimated at $2 billion the amount Pinochet would be liable for in damages if he were ever to be convicted of the charges he faces in Spain for genocide, state terrorism and torture.

In his ruling released Friday, Garzon dismissed the case he was pursuing against Riggs, the Washington-based bank in which Pinochet hid $10 million in secret accounts. The bank last month reached a plea deal with the U.S. Justice Department under which Riggs was fined $16 million after admitting to having failed to inform authorities about Pinochet's suspicious transactions.

Garzon dropped his charges against Riggs after the bank promised Spanish plaintiffs and prosecutors information about Pinochet's accounts and offered to pay millions of dollars to the Salvador Allende Foundation for distribution among victims of the Chilean dictatorship.

A U.S. lawyer representing the Spanish plaintiffs, Sam Buffone, told in Washington that the foundation, named for the socialist president ousted by Pinochet in 1973, is to receive $9 million. He said $1 million of the total would be devoted to identifying and tracking down eligible recipients.

Garzon's order dropping the charges against Riggs cited the settlements reached by the bank and concluded that executives of the U.S. institution had no "criminal intent" to commit the offenses he imputed to them: "fraudulent conveyance" and money-laundering. The judge also noted bank directors' cooperation with efforts to uncover assets belonging to Pinochet and his wife, Lucia Hiriart.

Taking those factors and the Justice Department fine into account, Garzon said, it was "not fitting to pursue a similar action" against the bank and its directors.

The crusading Spanish magistrate indicted Pinochet in December 1998 for crimes against humanity committed under his 1973-1990 regime. He claimed he had jurisdiction over the offenses in Chile because some of the victims were Spanish citizens.

Pursuant to a warrant issued by Garzon, the ex-strongman had been arrested in London in October 1998, and he remained in England under house arrest at a friend's country estate for 15 months until the British government rejected Spain's extradition request on the basis that Pinochet was too ill to face a trial.

Last September, after a probe by a U.S. Senate subcommittee revealed Pinochet's secret accounts at Riggs, Garzon expanded his indictment of the former dictator to include charges of money laundering and concealing assets.

The Spanish judge also added charges against Hiriart, Riggs and bank directors Joseph and Robert Allbritton, Steven Pheiffer and Carol Thompson, among others.

Pinochet is currently free on bail in Chile as his lawyers resort to further legal maneuvers to stop his being tried for murders and abductions under his rule, which is blamed for the deaths of more than 3,000 people.

The retired general is also under investigation for graft in connection with the money in the Riggs accounts, whose discovery prompted many in Chile to question how a career military officer who never earned more than $15,000 a year managed to accumulate millions of dollars.