Pinochet faces fraud charges

CHILE: Former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet was put under house arrest yesterday after being charged with tax fraud and …

CHILE: Former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet was put under house arrest yesterday after being charged with tax fraud and passport forgery related to $27 million (€22.9 million) stashed in secret bank accounts under false names.

Judge Carlos Cerda confined Pinochet to his home and set bail at $23,000.

Pinochet, who will be 90 tomorrow, has been indicted in two human rights cases in the last five years, but the cases were thrown out by courts that ruled his mild dementia, caused by frequent mini-strokes, made him unfit to face trial.

Human rights lawyers have pushed for years to convict Pinochet in thousands of cases of torture and killings by secret police under his 1973-90 rule, but the recent bank accounts case is the one case that has gathered momentum.

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"Today [he's charged with] economic crimes, let's hope that tomorrow it's for the genocide that took place during 17 years of dictatorship," Lorena Pizarro, president of one of Chile's biggest human rights groups, said at the Santiago tribunal building.

Pinochet recently had physical and psychiatric exams to see whether he was well enough to face a criminal process and it is unclear whether his defence will be able to block the new charges on health grounds. - (Reuters)