MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Argentina: 10 billion dollars in recorded corruption

Corruption and other financial crimes in the last 25 years in Argentina have cost 10 billion US dollars in government resources that could have helped in three years to end with indigence or fulfill all 2006 foreign debt payments.

The estimate belongs to the Financial Criminal Activities Research and Prevention Centre, CIPCE, a coalition of four non government organizations which have a data bank on these activities and a challenging motto, "behind every corrupt civil servant there's a businessman corrupting".

The data bank is a collection of 750 cases before criminal, financial and tax courts in Argentina's twenty most "active" jurisdictions plus names of companies, banks, managers, civil servants and from the private sector involved in corruption, graft and other criminal activities such as contraband, tax fraud and money laundering. Since CIPCE has been unable to have access to all cases, the estimate is a minimum.

"One of our jobs is to dimension the social impact of these kind of crimes, by different sectors, so we can understand that financial crimes cause victims and abuse of human rights", said Pedro Biscay, Director of the non government organization. Apparently of all cases analyzed only 3% actually reached a verdict; 7% are waiting sentencing and 90% remain in court proceedings.

"We believe more than ever, that it's essential to protect government assets" said Alberto Binder who belongs to one of the Cipce non government organizations.

Becoming a significant tool which enables the development of policies to recover assets is the main purpose of the data bank. According to Cipce all citizens have access to the information on individuals and companies involved in court actions because of alleged illegal activities. Only in Buenos Aires City the companies on record number 400 and individuals allegedly involved in financial crimes, 1.485.

The report also indicates that between 1980 and 2005, an estimated 30 billion US dollars fled from Argentina either through companies or individuals.