Last week I wrote about my feelings towards Augusto Pinochet, and my opinions of him and the people who assisted, in opening over 125 bank accounts, for which to abscond with money, off the backs of the Chilean citizens.
Pinochet, 89, ruled Chile following a 1973 military coup until 1990 and remained head of the country's armed forces until 1998. His regime killed or tortured thousands of Chileans. Riggs Bank admitted that Pinochet stashed more than $10 million in secret accounts between 1994 and 2002.
Today, one of the leading banks in the scandal, Riggs Bank was sentenced to pay $16 million by U.S. District Judge Ricardo Urbina, in Washington. Here's an excerpt of what he had to say;
"There is no way of measuring the amount of harm and atrocities and human rights violations perpetrated by Pinochet and Equatorial Guinea as a result of the enabling criminal activity by Riggs Bank, Urbina said. The bank now stands disclosed before this court as a greedy corporate henchman of dictators and their corrupt regimes".
Equatorial Guinea was cited for "serious abuses" in the U.S. State Department's 2004 human-rights survey. The report said there were arbitrary detentions of political dissidents and security forces tortured and beat prisoners, sometimes fatally. The government "severely restricted freedom of speech and of the press," the report said.
The light of truth is a great disinfectant but the pain from the wounds will last much longer.
