Peru: Vladimiro Montesinos Sentenced
Vladimiro Montesinos, intelligence advisor to former President Alberto Fujimori (1900-2000), was sentenced on July 1 to nine years and four months in prison for illegally taking control of the intelligence services when he was supposed to be an advisor. Besides finding Montesinos guilty of usurping power as de facto head of the Servicio de Inteligencia Nacional (SIN), anti-corruption Judge Saul Pena Farfan fined him about US$2.9 million.
This was the first sentence handed down against Montesinos in what is likely to be years of trials and legal proceedings. It was also the fourth attempt by the presiding judge to have the sentence read. Montesinos twice challenged the judge's authority to rule on the case and replaced his attorney once, dragging out for months what was supposed to be a brief trial.
The sentence was tougher than the seven-year sentence prosecutors had requested. The maximum prison sentence for corruption is 12 years. Under Peruvian law, sentences are not cumulative, so this sentence will negate any additional sentences of less than nine years. The year Montesinos has already served in jail will count toward his sentence.
During the sentencing, the court said the 57-year-old Montesinos admitted that he had run the SIN, even though he had never been officially named its leader.
In that role, he was perhaps the most feared individual in the country--operating largely from the shadows and rarely appearing in public--as well as the most powerful after Fujimori. Some say that Montesinos used his knowledge about corruption, human rights abuses, and other criminal activities as leverage with Fujimori, making him even more powerful than the president.
From a tainted past, Montesinos built his power base carefully and over many years. He was court-martialed by the military in 1976, accused of providing Peruvian military secrets to the US government. He spent several years in a military prison, during which time he began studying law.
After his release, he was a defense lawyer for Peruvian drug traffickers in the mid-1980s, and those connections continued to feed speculation that he was involved in the drug trade. In 1996, jailed drug lord Demetrio "Vaticano" Chavez Penaherrera claimed he paid Montesinos US$50,000 for every drug flight out of Peru (see NotiSur, 1996-08-23.
Many trials on more serious charges to follow
Montesinos, who was identified by the CIA early in his military career as an asset in the Andean region and treated by the US State Department as an ally long after his connections to human rights abuses were clear, was convicted on a relatively minor and technical charge. It was, however, a significant step in the most complicated criminal process in Peru's history.
Montesinos is facing as many as 100 additional trials on charges ranging from genocide and torture to money laundering and drug trafficking. …