Menem founds new Peronist faction [View All]

Menem founds new Peronist faction


Mr Menem pledged to create a united Peronism
Former Argentine President Carlos Menem has launched a new political group within the Peronist party and vowed to return to Argentina soon.
Mr Menem, now living in Chile, sent a recorded message to supporters, saying his new People's Peronism group would try to reunite the party.

He also accused current President Nestor Kirchner of dividing Peronism in order to create his own party.

Mr Menem faces possible fraud charges if he returns to Argentina.
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3809265.stm

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Bush Friend Arrested for Illegal Arms Trafficking

JUNE 7, 2001. A long-time friend of former U.S. President George H. Bush was arrested today on charges of illegal arms trafficking. If found guilty, he could face a jail term of up to ten years. Only a phone call from the new Bush White House might spare him the indignity, he thinks. But the phones aren't ringing.

The friend in trouble is the former President of Argentina, Carlos Menem, a golfing partner and business benefactor of the elder Bush. He is suspected of having illegally sold 6,500 tons of arms to Croatia and Ecuador between 1991 and 1995, in violation of international arms embargoes. Menem, who was put under house arrest today by a Buenos Aires federal judge, said in his defense last weekend that the U.S. knew all about the arms sales.

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher gave Menem the cold shoulder on Monday. He was unaware, he said, of any action by the U.S. government entailing approval or encouragement of Argentinean arms sales to Croatia. Given how profitable the Menem connection has been for the Bushes, one might imagine Boucher was frostily putting interests of state ahead of the Bush family, until you realize that, with a Bush in the White House, they are essentially one and the same.

In 1988, a few months before Menem was elected for his first term, George W. Bush, the then oilman son of a sitting U.S. President, had tried to pressure the administration of outgoing President Raúl Alfonsín to favor Enron, the Houston-based company, over other, more qualified bidders to build a gas pipeline in Argentina. He was unsuccessful, but the Bushes hit it off with the high-rolling, big-spending Menem from the start. One of Menem's first acts as President was to give Enron a $300-million sweetheart deal on the pipeline project.
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http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/SIM202A.html


Bush, Menem



Former Argentinean president Carlos Menem with his girlfriend,the

former Miss Universe Cecilia Bolocco of Chile, Las Vegas, Jan. 12, 2001

Dirty Money, Big Banks
and the Mafia State
by Ana Simo

FEBRUARY 27, 2001. It has all the ingredients of a best-selling thriller. A fearless, crusading legislator, execution-style murders at a luxury beach resort, billions in dirty money, a nosy U.S. Senate subcommittee, a country's tottering economy, drug cartels, arms dealers, bribes, and even a golf partner of former President George Bush. It's Argentina's widening money-laundering scandal, now entering its last and most convoluted chapter.

The Mafia State
The anti-corruption crusader is 46-year old Elisa Carrió, a tough politician and mother of four who represents El Chaco, a poor, landlocked province bordering Paraguay in Argentina's north.

For the past few months, La Gorda (the Fat One), as Argentineans fondly call her, has relentlessly unearthed and exposed a complex, 10-billion dollar web of money laundering from drug and arms sales, and political corruption going back at least a decade. In the process, she has become something of a folk hero in her country.

Carrió says that Argentina is "a mafia state," riddled by systemic corruption, where high-level impunity is the rule. She has accused the country's banking and financial establishment, including members of the powerful Argentinean Bank Association, with abetting this rotten system.
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...Menem's administration was reputedly one of the most corrupt in recent Argentinean history.
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http://www.thegully.com/essays/argentina/010227corruption.html