Buenos Aires, Argentina – The oldest daughter of former Chilean dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet was detained Wednesday at Dulles International Airport in the United States where she requested political asylum, a Chilean official said.
Lucia Pinochet, 60, arrived at about 7 a.m. on a United Airlines flight from Buenos Aires, and customs officials stopped her for questioning. She had been served with a subpoena over the weekend in Chile, along with her mother and three siblings. They had been ordered to appear in court on Monday in Santiago, the Chilean capital, on tax fraud charges connected to a probe of her father’s illegal bank accounts.
A spokesman for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said she was in U.S. custody at the airport in Virginia “pending resolution of her immigration status.” Chile’s Interior Minister, Francisco Vidal, said U.S. Ambassador Craig Kelly informed his government that Pinochet, sought on an international arrest warrant, had requested asylum. U.S. officials said they could not comment on that issue.
Vidal said the Chilean government, as a democracy, rejects the basis for such a claim.
“Political asylum … is when there is no system of law, when there is no due process,” he said.
Pinochet’s father, 90, faces charges for financial crimes and human rights abuses allegedly committed during his 17-year rule from 1973 to 1990. His wife, Lucia Hiriart, and three of their other children obeyed the summons, but Lucia was not present in court, according to Chilean news reports.
Her son, Rodrigo Garcia, told Chile’s Radio Agricultura that he had driven by car with his month on Sunday across the Chilean border into Argentina.
Diplomatic sources said she then took a domestic flight from the city of Mendoza to Buenos Aires and connected with the U.S.-bound flight, but Garcia stayed behind.
“I want to make it clear that the journey we made to Argentina had been planned beforehand and she was never running away from anything,” Garcia said in the radio interview.
He also sent a statement by his mother to a Santiago newspaper, in which she rejected the charges against her family.
“I am sorry that the instruments of the state are being used with the purpose of defaming and discrediting the honor of the people,” she said in the statement. “They don’t seek to clarify the source of my father’s funds, but instead some seek the total defamation of each and every member of my family.” Lucia Pinochet is accused of evading almost $1 million in taxes. A Chilean prosecutor said Wednesday that the minimum punishment in her case was three years in prison.
A U.S. customs service spokesperson, Suzanne Trevino, said she did not know why Pinochet had been stopped at the airport. In general, she said travelers would be referred by airport inspectors for additional interviews “if there were a problem with the documents or something suspicious.” Along with her mother and three siblings, Pinochet was charged with filing false tax declarations and helping her father hide nearly $27 million in more than 125 bank accounts outside of Chile, including an account at the now-defunct Riggs Bank in Washington, where he kept about $8 million.
Court officials in Santiago said the family members had been charged with filing “maliciously incomplete” and false tax declarations.
Chilean Foreign Minister Ignacio Walker told reporters that Pinochet could be sent back to Argentina by U.S. authorities, could voluntarily return to Argentina where Chile would submit an extradition request, or decide to return to Chile and appear in court.
In Santiago, President Ricardo Lagos told reporters that talks were underway to arrange her voluntary return.
“All of this has an effect on the country – it’s sad,” said Lagos, a moderate socialist and longtime critic of the former dictator.
Augusto Pinochet faces is charged with financial fraud, and overseeing the murder and torture of thousands of people after the 1973 military coup that brought him to power. He has avoided standing trial for the alleged crimes by claiming health problems, including dementia.
A U.S. Senate report last year revealed that nine banks had allowed Pinochet to use fake account names and offshore companies to hide millions of dollars from tax authorities and international prosecutors seeking to seize assets stolen from Chile. Riggs Bank pleaded guilty last year to a criminal felony charge for failing to report suspicious transactions, and agreed to pay $41 million in civil and criminal fines to the U.S. government.
On Tuesday, a Santiago court approved bail for Pinochet’s wife and their other children; Marco Antonio, Jacqueline and Veronica.
Pinochet’s eldest son, Augusto, was not arrested. He has been charged with falsifying passports but not with tax evasion.
Staff writer Spencer Hsu in Washington and special correspondent Jonathan Franklin in Santiago contributed to this report.
