Two billion dollars is the figure arrived at by the Peruvian Unidad Financiera Estratégica y de Cooperación Internacional, a special office for prosecuting corruption offences, for the illicit gains of former President Alberto Fujimori and his henchmen. This money was removed from the country in various illegal ways that UFEC says are currently under investigation. This figure is considerably higher than that arrived at by Transparency International, an NGO that studies corruption, which in its Global Corruption Report 2004 listed the top ten most corrupt politicians of the past two decades and put Fujimori at number seven, estimating he embezzled six hundred million million dollars. Neither figure quite puts Fujimori in the same league as world-class kleptocrats like Suharto or Mobutu Sese Seko, but then Fujimori only had a decade to get the job done.
Posted at: 19:22 | category: /peru
As anyone who has taken a bus from Lima to Huancayo in the central Andean highlands knows, the valley in which the town of La Oroya is situated is a veritable moonscape; there is not a single leaf of grass to be seen, just barren slopes. No, it is not the result of some geological anamoly, it is because the biggest integrated lead, copper and zinc smelter in Peru is located there, owned by Doe Run of St. Louis, Missouri. Thanks to the smelter, the town is the midst of a public health crisis of tragic proportions:
Almost all young children in Peru’s La Oroya mining town have harmful levels of lead in their blood and many are suffering from bronchitis and stunted growth because of toxic gases pumped out by the U.S.-owned metals smelter there. Emissions from Peru’s top smelter in the central Andes are also causing acid rain, polluting rivers with zinc and arsenic and creating “generations of sick people,” non-governmental organizations and La Oroya community groups told a mining conference in Lima. “In the latest study by Doe Run and the health ministry, 99.9 percent of children under six have lead blood levels above what the World Health Organization calls normal,” said Hugo Villa, a doctor who heads the La Oroya Health Movement NGO. “Our children are being poisoned by this smelter. It is creating generations of sick people.”
Under Peru’s environmental laws, Doe Run is required to build a US$100 million sulfuric acid plant to cut sulfur dioxide emissions by 2007. But Doe Run said it needed until 2011 or it would be in default on bank loans and be forced to pull out of Peru. The government’s decision to grant more time to Doe Run to clean up its toxic emissions will subject children to more pollution and increase the incidence of lung, liver and kidney disease in La Oroya.
According to Friends of the Earth, Doe Run is the world’s second largest lead mining and smelting company. The company is one of several heavily polluting companies owned by reclusive Long Island billionaire Ira Rennert, who has been called “the biggest private polluter in America.” FOE cites the EPA’s Toxic Release Inventory which identifies Doe Run as “the biggest polluter in the state of Missouri, due in large part to toxic emissions from its 110-year old lead smelter in the town of Herculaneum” (near St. Louis). According to FOE, pollution at La Oroya is so intense it has precipitated an emergency situation:
According to Peruvian government figures, 90% of children in the city have blood-lead levels above acceptable international standards; nearly 20% have lead levels that should require hospitalization. Emissions of sulfur dioxide, cadmium, arsenic and lead all greatly exceed World Health Organization standards — according to the company’s own data. Long term exposure to these substances can have potentially fatal impacts on human health. Contamination levels at La Oroya have increased dramatically since Doe Run bought the Doe Run operation from the Peruvian government in 1997. When Doe Run purchased the complex, it agreed to undertake an investment program to modernize the plant and equipment and to meet the requirements of the Environmental Management and Remediation Plan (PAMA in Spanish, a legal requirement in Peru). However, because of the decline in the prices of most metals since 1997 and the company’s desire to pay for its investment program from income generated by the refinery itself, it has decided to delay [until 2011] the largest single investment: scrubbers to reduce SO2 emissions from the smoke stack.
The company’s own website indicates that Doe Run Peru had sales of nearly US$424 million in 2003 (PDF)
Aside from the theoretical issue of whether governments or not should be in the business of running such enterprises, the problems in La Oroya highlight the dark side of many real-world privatizations, and not only in the South, namely the lack of subsequent control and accountability. On Alberto Fujimori’s watch, hundreds of state-owned enterprises like the La Oroya smelter were sold off, but effective mechanisms to ensure that the investments promised by the new (often foreign) owners were not in place. Given that nearly all the money raised in Fujimori’s privatization binge was squandered, Peruvians are now paying twice.
Posted at: 19:03 | category: /peru
One official admitted privately that the process had stalled [...] Peruvian officials accuse the Japanese government of deliberate foot-dragging in order to avoid international embarrassment at rejecting Lima’s request. [...] Japanese officials have said extradition is unlikely because Mr Fujimori has been granted Japanese citizenship and there is no extradition treaty between the two countries. [...] Several senior Japanese politicians have supported Mr Fujimori, partly because of what they consider his decisive action in ending a 127-day hostage crisis at the Japanese embassy in Lima in 1997.Despite the myriad of charges against him, Fujimori still has some fans back home. A poll of 2,447 Peruvians this month by the Instituto de Desarrollo e Investigación de Ciencias Económicas (IDICE) indicates that 12.1% of the respondents would vote for him in the 2006 presidential election.
Posted at: 18:57 | category: /peru
The US government says it is not involved in aerial coca eradication in Peru. The Peruvian government claims likewise. But thirteen people were admitted with symptoms of chemical poisoning to a hospital in Tocache, in the Upper Huallaga Valley, Peru’s second most important coca growing region, and evidence points to aerial coca erradiction activities being the cause. Cocalera activist Nancy Obregon said a helicopter was seen flying over the area in mid February, and men in masks and white gloves were seen throwing a powder mixed with water from a height of six to ten meters. Some two thousand coca growers blocked main roads in protest and demanded a government commission investigate the matter. According to official estimates, Peru slashed coca production to a 20-year low in 2003 but output shot up 55% in 2004 because of widespread US-backed coca eradiction efforts in Colombia, where airplanes and helicopters are used, had driven prices up.
Posted at: 18:17 | category: /peru
Posted at: 18:12 | category: /peru