Fausta's Blog

American and Latin American Politics, Society, and Culture

Archives for 2016

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Brazil: The Greek ambassador murder mystery UPDATE Moreira confessed?

The Greek ambassador to Brazil, Kyriakos Amiridis, age 59, had been missing since Monday night.
Police investigate disappearance of Greek ambassador in Rio. Authorities analyzing corpse found inside what is believed to be missing diplomat’s rental car

Brazilian police investigating the disappearance of the Greek ambassador to Brazil, Kyriakos Amiridis, suspect a charred body found inside a rental car could be that of the ambassador. Amiridis, 59, was spending his Christmas holidays in Rio de Janeiro but has not been seen since Monday night, when he was last spotted driving his rented Ford Ka in the suburb of Nova Iguaçu. His Brazilian wife informed the police of his disappearance two days later.
. . .
Nova Iguaçu, a city connected to Rio, where Amiridis’s wife has a family home and where the car was found, is not a traditional destination for tourists. It has a population of around 800,000 and is one of the 13 cities that make up the Baixada Fluminens, a violent territory where paramilitary groups and drug dealers operate with certain impunity.

O Globo (link in Portuguese) reports that the police have identified the body as that of Ambassador Amiridis. Investigators have requested the arrest of Mrs. Amiridis, Françoise de Souza Oliveira, her alleged lover, military police officer Sergio Gomes Moreira, Jr., and two unnamed accomplices.

According to the police, Ambassador Amiridis was murdered at his home, his body was removed from the house at 3AM Wednesday morning and placed in the car he rented on December 21, where it was found burned yesterday below an underpass.

Amiridis was Greek consul-general in Rio from 2001 to 2004 and became Greek ambassador to Brazil in January of this year.

UPDATE:
Globo TV reported on Friday afternoon that officer Sergio Moreira, 29, confessed to killing the ambassador on Monday night. Police have not yet confirmed this new information.

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Colombia: 5,000 FARC to be released from jail

Colombia approves amnesty for FARC combatants. Move will benefit estimated 5,000 former guerrillas, many in jail for political crimes

Colombia’s Congress on Wednesday took a major step forward in the country’s peace process when it approved an amnesty for former combatants of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). The new law provides legal guarantees for around 5,000 ex-fighters from the guerrilla group, who will now move to holding areas from where they will start to make the transition to civilian life.

Alvaro Uribe tweets that drug trafficking will go unpunished as it falls under “political crimes:”


Additionally,

The law is seen as the key that will allow the 52-year-old guerrilla group to begin full-scale demobilization. Those accused of serious crimes, however, will have to go before a special tribunal. Even so, they will also have access to reduced sentences that will include “confinement” but not prison time.

Related:
Colombia child soldiers reluctant to leave FARC ‘family’ – rebel commander (emphasis added),

Victoria Sandino, a commander with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), has a seat at the negotiating table where the government and FARC are working to revive a peace accord signed by both sides but narrowly rejected by voters in a referendum earlier this month.

She said children are wary about leaving rebel ranks.

“They don’t want to leave the organization,” Sandino told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in a telephone interview from Cuba where peace negotiators are gathered.

“One of the reasons they are telling us this is: ‘Well you protected us here during the fighting and the entire period of the war.”

“And now that there’s no fighting, we are expected to leave … the environment we know, the people we know, and our family because the FARC organization is a big family for all of us,” she said.

A big enslaved family, at that. Sandino stated “there are no more combatants under age 15” after the FARC released all of eight child soldiers last September.

A number that I consider as believable as the FARC’s happy family.

Post re-edited to add missing HTML.

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Mexico: Jalisco Cartel – New Generation’s bloody history, and Colombia’s FARC cocaine trade partners

InSight Crime posts Luis Alonso Pérez’s article, Mexico’s Jalisco Cartel – New Generation: From Extinction to World Domination

From a small group of deserters from the now-extinct Milenio Cartel, they evolved into a vast criminal network whose links extend through all of the Americas, as well as Europe and Asia.

The key to their rapid expansion has been the strategic presence of operations on the southeast border of the United States, next to Tijuana, and the northeast border, next to Vancouver, Canada. Additionally, they control areas in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

Alonso Pérez states that “As of this year, this cartel is the biggest and most important in Mexico.”

Among their allies, Alonso Pérez writes, are Colombia’s FARC, who supply the cocaine,

The report states that the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia – FARC) supplied the cocaine, and that the CJNG transported shipments to 10 key cities in the United States including San Diego, Los Angeles and Seattle. Among the points from which they regularly operate are maritime ports and high-capacity airplane terminals, which facilitate trafficking activities. The latest indication of their international expansion towards the Southern Cone was the arrest of Gerardo González Valencia — Abigael’s brother — and his wife, Wendy Amaral, in April of this year in Montevideo, Uruguay. The charges: assisting Los Cuinis with drug trafficking.

Read the full article here, and the Spanish original here.

Read also The Unstoppable Rise of Jalisco Nueva Generación As North America’s Largest Drug Cartel.

Exit question:
Is placing the unelected FARC members in Colombia’s Congress, while the FARC remain partners with Mexico’s most important cartel, a good idea, for the sake of “peace”?

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Brazil: Temer to veto relief bill for big spenders

Brazilian presidents can veto parts of bills, so Temer’s putting his foot down:
Brazil’s President Temer to Veto Relief for Indebted States. Mr. Temer plans to negotiate early next year a new bill that would include some of the austerity measures that were cut

Mr. Temer plans to veto the part of the bill outlining what states will have to do in return for renegotiating the debt, while signing the part on the new debt terms, according to the finance ministry. The administration will negotiate early next year a proposal that would include some of the austerity measures that were cut, the ministry said.
. . .
The bill to be vetoed by the president amounted to a giveaway to free-spending states, according to Jankiel Santos, an economist at Haitong Banco de Investimento do Brasil.

Congress can override his veto. Let’s hope they don’t.

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Venezuela Admits Mortgaging Citgo in the USA to Russia, Goes on Attack

Following up on the story that PDVSA mortgaged to Russia refineries located in the U.S.,


Venezuela Admits Mortgaging Citgo in the USA to Russia, Goes on Attack

After an investigation by Redd Intelligence and the Latin American Herald Tribune uncovered that Venezuela has mortgaged Citgo to Russia’s Rosneft, PDVSA came out swinging, defensively confirming the story and along with Venezuela’s ruling regime, launching an attack on LAHT, REDD and Russ Dallen.

PDVSA’s statement (emphasis added)

did not reveal what they received in exchange for the shares — nor why it was kept secret — but it is believed that Rosneft lent the Venezuelan state oil company $1.5 billion with the above mentioned stake in the Citgo refineries as collateral.

“Citgo is still owned by PDVSA”, PDVSA’s statement begins by saying, but later in the text PDVSA also admits that “in October it used as guarantee a 50.1% of Citgo in a bond swap operation.” If PDVSA defaults, Rosneft and bondholders could end up owning the refineries.

In short, the assets accumulated by previous Venezuela governments over 40 years were liquidated by “chavismo” in less than 10 years and with the proceeds disposed of in a manner not at all transparent.

The article also describes Russia’s expanding energy foothold.

Read the full report.

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Argentina: Cristina indicted, again

on corruption charges related to Austral Construcciones, owned by Lázaro Báez involving contracts from 2003-2015.

Former Argentine President Cristina Kirchner Indicted in Corruption Case. Indictment is connected to infrastructure projects awarded to company owned by a close associate

On Tuesday, Judge Ercolini said many of the road projects in Santa Cruz were awarded to construction company Austral Construcciones. The company is owned by businessman Lázaro Báez, with whom the Kirchners had long-standing business ties dating back to when Mr. Kirchner was governor of Santa Cruz in the 1990s.

The judge, who ordered about $640 million in Mrs. Kirchner’s assets be frozen, wrote in the document that the former president had played a chief role in a scheme to divert state resources to Austral.

The document said Mrs. Kirchner and her husband created the institutional setup for the corruption ring to succeed and passed decrees that allowed funds to be directed and controlled so that they reached Mr. Báez through the awarding of public-road works.

The NYT reports,

The charges focus on 52 projects in the southern province of Santa Cruz, where Néstor Kirchner was governor for more than a decade until he became president of Argentina in 2003.

Cristina was also indicted this year on charges that she ordered the country’s central bank to illegally trade derivatives, costing the country about $5.5 billion. She’s under investigation in several other cases.

Related:

Lázaro Báez busted.

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Someone had the bright idea of asking Carlos Eire to be guest lecturer on a luxury cruise to Cuba

And this is what it looks like When “exclusive” apartheid tour companies come knocking on the door…

Today I received an email invitation to serve as a lecturer in a “very exclusive” luxury tour of Castrogonia.

The tour company –which shall remain nameless — boasts of being ‘The ultimate companion for the sophisticated traveller’

For the record, I’m posting that email as proof of the fact that tour operators are approaching “luxury” clients, planning trips to Castrogonia that are full-blown apartheid neocolonialist ventures.

Read the rest.

Only an uninformed idiot would ask Dr. Eire to take part of such travesty.

To add to the insult, the email he received mentions that “The NY Times is going to send someone along to write about [another one of their trips].”

The NYT Boor Review never got around to reviewing Waiting for Snow in Havana, even after it won the National Book Award.

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