Santiago – The jailed former intelligence chief during Chile’s last military dictatorship said he has concrete evidence linking ex-dictator Augusto Pinochet and his youngest son to the cocaine trade.
In an interview with Television Nacional late Tuesday, retired Gen. Manuel Contreras – the erstwhile head of Pinochet’s dreaded DINA secret police – reiterated previous statements in which he said the fortune of the army general who ruled Chile from his 1973 coup until 1990 derived from drug trafficking.
A judicial investigation in Chile has found that Pinochet accumulated a fortune worth $27 million in secret accounts abroad. He is being charged with not paying taxes on that income as well as falsification of passports in connection with the evasion scheme.
Pinochet, 90, is also accused of crimes involving the torture and summary execution of real or imagined political opponents, but to date has avoided being tried due to what his lawyers say is physical and mental incapacity.
Speaking from the military prison where he is serving a 12-year sentence for a kidnap-murder, Contreras said that Pinochet obtained 134 false passports for his businesses abroad.
“Even the cat had a (false) passport to leave the country if that were necessary,” Contreras said sardonically.
Contreras added that Pinochet’s youngest son, Marco Antonio Pinochet; the Chilean entrepreneur of Syrian origin Edgardo Batich; and former DINA chemist Eugenio Berrios “were authorized to produce drugs within the (army chemical) plant” in the central town of Talagante.
He said the three formed a company for this purpose and later “deposited money in the 125 accounts that general Pinochet had.” According to Contreras, that company, which was in operation between 1987 and 1989, would have sold the drugs in the United States and Europe.
The former DINA chief said he had proof to support his accusations, but he did not say where the alleged evidence was being kept.
Regarding the secret accounts that Pinochet maintained outside Chile, he said “there is still a lot left to find out.”
“They haven’t found Mr. Pinochet’s money so the party must go on. I’m telling the truth because for me it was a very big disappointment,” Contreras said.
Marco Antonio Pinochet and Batich responded to Contreras’ accusations, first delivered two weeks ago to Judge Claudio Pavez, by filing a lawsuit for slander and libel.
Berrios was found dead – with a bullet in the head – in Uruguay in 1995. He had been smuggled there four years earlier, allegedly as part of a coordinated effort by the two countries’ armed forces to keep him from testifying in Chile about crimes of the 1973-1990 dictatorship.
