Do Colombia’s Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) have a multibillion-dollar fortune from kidnapping and drug trafficking stashed in foreign bank accounts?
That question has triggered an explosive debate in Colombia just as it tries to turn the page on the half-century conflict between the government and the Marxist rebel group.
The FARC’s ill-gotten gains have long been a subject of scrutiny, but the issue was blown wide open again when The Economist put a number on the guerrillas’ alleged fortune.
The British weekly reported that the FARC had assets of US$10.5 billion in 2012, citing an unpublished study by government analysts.
The article opened a new rift between the FARC and the government even as negotiators from both sides work to hammer out the final details of a peace accord at long-running talks in Havana.
“What a joke that Economist story. They should check their sources and not believe stories about the insurgency’s imaginary fortune,” the FARC’s chief peace negotiator, Ivan Marquez, wrote on Twitter. “No human being takes up arms against an unjust regime to get rich.”
Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos had a very different take.
“I don’t have the slightest doubt... [that the FARC] probably have money somewhere,” Santos said.
At the height of its strength in the 1990s and 2000s, the FARC made huge amounts of cash kidnapping wealthy citizens for ransom, operating illegal mines in territory under its control and running a large chunk of the drugs trade in the world’s largest cocaine-producing nation, but it is hard to pin down exactly how much.
“Estimating the FARC’s resources will always be a matter of speculation,” said Gustavo Duncan, a Colombian academic who researches the guerrillas’ involvement in drug trafficking.
Several experts on the conflict and sources close to the rebels dismissed the estimate published by The Economist as exaggerated, but beyond the matter of the exact amount, “what’s important is the availability of those resources as part of the peace negotiations,” Duncan said.
“That money should serve to pay reparations to victims of the conflict and not to fatten personal fortunes,” he said.
The rebels for their part insist they have no money, a claim political analysts tend to reject.
“It’s important that the FARC declare what they have. Their position is to say they have nothing, that they’re poor, but that’s an exaggeration, because we know they’ve lived off of kidnappings, extortion and drug trafficking,” said Frederic Masse, a specialist in conflicts and peace negotiations at Colombia’s Externado University.
School bullies in Singapore are to face caning under new guidelines, but the education minister on Tuesday said it would be meted out only as a last resort with strict safeguards. Human rights groups regularly criticize Singapore for the use of corporal punishment, which remains part of the school and criminal justice systems, but authorities have defended it as a deterrent to crime and serious misconduct. Caning was discussed in the parliament after legislators asked how it would be used in relation to bullying in schools. The debate followed stricter guidelines on serious student misconduct, including bullying, unveiled by the Singaporean Ministry of
‘GROSS NEGLIGENCE?’ Despite a spleen typically being significantly smaller than a liver, the surgeon said he believed Bryan’s spleen was ‘double the size of what is normal’ A Florida surgeon who is facing criminal charges after allegedly removing a patient’s liver instead of his spleen has said he is “forever traumatized” by that person’s death. In a deposition from November last year that was recently obtained by NBC, 44-year-old Thomas Shaknovsky described the death of 70-year-old William Bryan as an “incredibly unfortunate event that I regret deeply.” Bryan died after the botched surgery; and last month, a grand jury in Tallahassee indicted Shaknovsky on a charge of manslaughter. “I’m forever traumatized by it and hurt by it,” Shaknovsky added, also saying that wrong-site surgeries can happen “during
A MESSAGE: Japan’s participation in the Balikatan drills is a clear deterrence signal to China not to attack Taiwan while the US is busy in the Middle East, an analyst said The Japan Self-Defense Forces yesterday fired a Type 88 anti-ship missile during a joint maritime exercise with US, Australian and Philippine forces, hitting a decommissioned Philippine Navy ship in waters facing the disputed South China Sea, in drills that underscore Tokyo’s rising willingness to project military power on China’s doorstep. The drill took place as Manila and Tokyo began talks on a potential defense equipment transfer, made possible by Japan’s decision to scrap restrictions on military exports. The discussions include the possible early transfer of Abukuma-class destroyers and TC-90 aircraft to the Philippines, Japanese Minister of Defense Shinjiro Koizumi said. Philippine Secretary of
A South Korean judge who last week more than doubled former South Korean first lady Kim Keon-hee’s prison sentence was found dead yesterday, police said. Shin Jong-o was found unconscious at about 1am at the Seoul High Court building, an investigator at the Seocho District Police Station in Seoul said. Shin was taken to a hospital and pronounced dead, he said. “There is no sign of foul play in the death,” the investigator added. Local media reported that Shin had left a suicide note, but the investigator said there was none. On Tuesday last week, Shin presided over 53-year-old Kim’s appeal trial, finding her guilty
RSS