Augusto Pinochet faced charges Tuesday over secret multimillion-dollar US bank accounts, possibly tainting with fraud the Chilean ex-dictator known for human rights abuses but thought to be un-corrupt.
Chilean lawyers Carmen Hertz and Alfonso Insunza laid their charges after a US congressional investigation found that Riggs Bank, in Washington, DC, had ignored banking regulations to launder money between 1994 and 2002. The accounts held between four million and eight million dollars.
"Chilean justice must investigate however many crimes Pinochet has committed," Hertz said after entering the charges at Santiago's Court of Appeals.
"I have no prior indications to establish the origin of these accounts nor of the funds that were deposited in those accounts," lawyer Pablo Rodriguez admitted, after meeting other members of Pinochet's defence team.
"No one in Chile is above the law, Lagos said in New York after meeting UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.
Chile's State Defence Council announced Tuesday that it, too, would file unspecified charges against Pinochet.
The president of the council, which oversees the interests of the state, said earlier that it would investigate how a soldier could have amassed such a fortune, by examining the origins of Pinochet's money and whether Pinochet had defrauded the state or evaded taxes in the process.
"That money is donations and from his personal savings," Pinochet's son, Marco Antonio Pinochet, told local Radio Agricultura.
US President George W. Bush, as he met with Chilean President Ricardo Lagos in the White House Oval Office on Monday, promised a "full investigation" into whether Riggs discreetly helped Pinochet hide assets after his arrest in London, when in October 1998 Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon issued a warrant for his capture.
Hertz and Insunza are two of seven lawyers who four years ago brought charges against Pinochet for some of the more than 3,000 deaths officially recognised to have occurred during the military regime 1973-1990.
However, the case was closed in 2002 when Chile's Supreme Court found that Pinochet, now 88, suffered from "moderate" dementia rendering him unable to defend himself.
"Pinochet has committed crimes against the general interests of at least three countries: Chile, Spain and the United States and the crime of fraud against the families of the victims of his crimes that we take before Spanish courts," Hertz said.
Hertz's husband was killed soon after the military took power in 1973, the so-called "Caravan of Death" for which Pinochet had been charged but never faced trial, claiming dementia.
"This will affect how we see history," political scientist Patricio Navia told AFP.
"This clearly throws cold water on his backers' arguments that his transparency was the top virtue of his regime."
Pinochet owned only a small house and car before 1973, but 17 years later, held 11 properties in Chile, including apartments in beach tourist areas and houses in the best sections of Santiago.
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