MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Menem's millionaire assets frozen

Former Pte. Carlos Menem

A judge has ordered that 112 million dollars of former Argentine president Carlos Menem's assets be frozen as he investigates the allegations of illegal weapons deals during Menem's term of office.

Federal Judge Rafael Caputo barred Menem from leaving Argentina during an investigation into illicit arms sales to Ecuador and Croatia in the 1990s, Clarín and La Nación dailies reported during the weekend. The federal court was closed over the weekend and telephone calls by The Associated Press to Caputo went unanswered. The judge did not order the detention of the 77-year-old former president, who is currently a senator from his native La Rioja province. Menem was detained for six months in 2001 during an earlier probe into an alleged conspiracy to sell artillery, anti-tank missiles, mortars and rifles to Ecuador and Croatia in violation of UN embargoes. The former president, who has denied any wrongdoing, was freed that year by a Supreme Court panel he had largely appointed during his time in office. Caputo revived the earlier investigation. The probe centres on allegations Argentina illegally sold weapons to Croatia in the early 1990s at the time of a United Nations embargo on arms sales to countries of the warring ex-Yugoslavia. The investigators say arms were also sold in 1995 to Ecuador, a country enmeshed in a brief armed conflict with Peru. Menem, whose two terms were marked by corruption scandals and growing government indebtedness that preceded a 2001-2002 economic crisis, lost a 2003 re-election bid to current President Néstor Kirchner. Menem ran third in a gubernatorial election for La Rioja province last month, and did not register by yesterday's deadline for the October 28 presidential race in which Kirchner's wife Cristina is the heavy front-runner. Buenos Aires Herald