Chileans have learned to live with the political traumas bequeathed them by the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet, which ended in 1990 and left about 4,000 people dead or missing. But two years ago, they were surprised to discover that he had also amassed an illicit fortune.
The source of that wealth, estimated at US$28 million or more, was never clear. But Chilean officials say an investigation begun last year into the mysterious death of a high-ranking military officer, Colonel Gerardo Huber, is providing important clues.
Huber's death was ruled a suicide after his body was found on the banks of a river here early in 1992, just as he was poised to testify in a case of a covert arms deal gone bad. That multimillion-dollar transaction was handled by what current government officials suspect was a syndicate that generated wealth for Pinochet and his inner circle.
More than that, government officials say, the Huber case suggests that Pinochet and his associates were willing to use the military intelligence service not only to eliminate political threats to their power -- standard practice for them during the dictatorship -- but also to protect the fortunes they were surreptitiously accumulating.
In March, the investigating judge, Claudio Pavez Ahumada, concluded that Huber was "neutralized" as part of a plot by the Chilean military to prevent arms deals and other "irregular operations" from becoming public.
Six high-ranking retired military officers, including a former chief of the intelligence service and another general, have been arrested and charged with "illicit association" in the case. Pavez said that his inquiry had not ended, and that he aimed to discover who ordered Huber's execution and who carried it out.
He and other government officials investigating the case would not rule out that the trail could even lead to Pinochet. Withered by age and disease at 90, the discredited former dictator still casts a shadow over the life of the nation, but has escaped prosecution in the 16 years since he left the presidency.
"This was clearly a homicide," Pavez said in an interview here.
Court records, testimony and interviews with people involved in the case suggest that Pinochet's role in arms deals is greater than he has admitted. So, too, some say, may be his knowledge of the circumstances surrounding Huber's death.
At the moment, the Huber case is one of four judicial inquiries under way here, all of which have touched on the question of illegal arms transactions and the possibility that they were one of the main sources of the former dictator's fortune.
Among the other matters being looked at, investigators said, are several that took place after Pinochet stepped down as president in 1990. These were arms sales to Ecuador and the purchase of 200 Leopard tanks from the Netherlands in 1998.
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