Andrew Clem home
Andrew Clem banner

Blog post


Monthly archives
(all categories)


December 27, 2008 [LINK / comment]

Kirchner faces corrpution probe

The former president (and current "first husband") of Argentina, Nestor Kirchner, is being investigated for corrupt financial relationships with Hugo Chavez, the president of Venezuela. Among the questionable deals are a 2004 agreement under which Venezuelan petroleum was exchanged for Argentine manufactured goods; $90 million in government funds are missing. There are many other suspicious transactions, however. BBC. Last January, a businessman was indicted in a federal court in Miami, charged in a plot to funnel $800,000 in illicit campaign contributions to President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, who went on to win handily in the October 2007 election. The probe was begun after a complaint lodged by Elisa Carrio, the runner-up candidate. She is the leader of the left-wing "Civic Coalition."

It's rather remarkable that the probe has reached this far, even though it directly implicates the sitting president in major wrongdoing. Very few Latin American countries have a judiciary that is truly independent of the executive branch, which is a major reason why corruption is so widespread in the region.

Assassination plot in Bolivia?

The government of Bolivia announced a few days ago that a plot to assassinate President Evo Morales had been uncovered. It's certainly possible, given the intense hatred he has engendered through the course of his "revolution," but it could just as well be much ado about nothing, a ruse by the government to distract attention from other troubles. See CNN.com.

Country info pages

I have begun a long-overdue maintenance chore, reformatting and updating the Latin America country background information pages, beginning with Argentina and Bolivia. The other 18 pages have already been reformatted, but the chronologies on them are not yet updated. That should be completed within the next ten days or so.

Posted (or last updated or commented upon): 27 Dec 2008, 5: 05 PM

(unformatted URL)
      .



This post is over a week old, so comments are closed.


© Andrew G. Clem. All rights reserved. Your use of this material signifies your acceptance of the Terms of use.


Hits on this page (single blog post) since July 2, 2007:

Category archives:
(all years)



This (or that) year's
blog highlights

Blog highlights have been compiled for the years 2010-2012 thus far, and eventually will be compiled for earlier years, back to 2002.


Explanation

The "home made" blog organization system that I created was instituted on November 1, 2004, followed by several functional enhancements in subsequent years. I make no more than one blog post per day on any one category, so some posts may cover multiple news items or issues. Blog posts appear in the following (reverse alphabetical) order, which may differ from the chronological order in which the posts were originally made:

  1. Wild birds (LAST)
  2. War
  3. Science & Technology
  4. Politics
  5. Latin America
  6. Culture & Travel
  7. Canaries ("Home birds")
  8. Baseball (FIRST)