Miren Gutiérrez

MIREN GUTIÉRREZ | PERIODISTA Y ESCRITORA

«Los que más dinero negro lavan son algunos bancos de los países desarrollados»

ALBERTO MOYANO

Vota

3 votos

Miren Gutiérrez, durante la presentación de su novela.

La periodista donostiarra hablará

mañana en el Aula de Cultura DV

sobre las redes de blanqueo de dinero

La periodista Miren Gutiérrez (San Sebastián, 1966), editora jefe de la agencia internacional de noticias Inter Press Service, ofrecerá mañana en el Aula de Cultura DV una conferencia en torno La red del dinero sucio, tema que ya protagonizaba también su novela La ciudad de las cigarras. Y aunque los paraísos fiscales acaparan la atención mediática en estos asuntos, lo cierto es que son algunos bancos de Londres, Nueva York o Zurich los que realizan los mayores lavados de dinero procedente del tráfico de armas, de drogas y de otras actividades ilegales.

- Este tema, ¿da más para un libro-reportaje o para una novela?

- En la conferencia, hablaré de tres casos de investigación de la petrolera Mobile y de sus actividades en Panamá, Kazajastán y Estados Unidos. Todo esto es el trasfondo de otra novela.

- Todas estas redes, ¿no habían desaparecido con el libro tráfico de capitales y mercancías?

- Qué va. Para nada. En 2008, se calcula que se lavarán entre un millón de millones y 1,5 millón de millones de dólares. La mayor parte de este dinero se va a lavar en países ricos.

- La sensación general es que estas redes campan a sus anchas.

- Bueno, hay muchísima presión por parte de países como EE UU desde los atentados del 11-S de 2001. Washington ha puesto muchísimo énfasis en todas las jurisdicciones off shore para que refuercen sus regulaciones porque tener las leyes es una cosa y aplicarlas, otra. El problema es que puedes apretar las tuercas a todos los paraísos fiscales, pero donde más se lava es en Londres, Nueva York, Zurich o Liechtestein y los que más lavan son instituciones bancarias enormes que están en esos países.

- ¿Es un servicio habitual de determinados bancos?

- Sí, es toda una industria que se llama protección de activos. Estuve hace años en un congreso sobre este tema y los operadores que asistían bromeaban llamándola «planificación familiar». ¿Dónde escondo el dinero para que herede quién yo quiera o para que no lo herede una esposa o un esposo potencialmente divorciado? Esto sólo es parte del negocio porque la evasión fiscal nutre el blanqueo del dinero, que tiene que ver con actividades terroristas, del narcotráfico y operaciones ilegales.

- ¿Por ejemplo?

- Hay uno que me hace mucha gracia: el que relata la película La guerra de Charlie Wilson. La CIA financió con miles de millones de dólares las acciones de los mujaidines en Afganistán, que luchaban contra las tropas de la Unión Soviética. Se hizo gracias a que había instituciones financieras al servicio de la canalización de estos fondos a través de Pakistán.

- O sea, que hay organismos estatales que son clientes de estas redes.

- Un ejemplo: el Banco de Crédito y Comercio Internacional (BCCI), que colapsó en 1991, pero cuyo caso aún colea en los tribunales, es el mayor fraude bancario de la historia. Se perdieron entre 9,5 y 15.000 millones de dólares. Este banco sirvió a la CIA para canalizar fondos destinados a todo tipo de actividades irregulares en el extranjero.

-¿Cree que es una batalla perdida?

- Debe haber más intercambio de información entre países. Ahí tenemos el asunto de Alemania con Liechtenstein. En 2001, Arnoldo Aleman, ex presidente de Nicaragua, robó mucho dinero y estos fondos fueron localizados en bancos de EE UU. Con los casos de Fujimori y Montesinos en Perú pasó algo parecido.

- ¿Salen baratas estas prácticas?

- Lo típico es que haya un chivo expiatorio. Los bancos están obligados a seguir unas reglas, por ejemplo, conoce a tu cliente. Sin embargo, tenemos el caso bastante reciente del Riksbank, en Washington, que lavó dinero para Augusto Pinochet y Teodoro Obiang, y tan sólo ha pagado una multa de 25 millones de dólares. Nada, en comparación con los cientos de millones de dólares que lavó para estos dictadores.

- ¿Y sería capaz de explicar el caso de la Société Générale de Francia de modo que se entienda?

- No es un caso de evasión fiscal, sino de falta de controles internos que, recurrente y lamentablemente, se da en los colapsos bancarios. Lo que ha pasado es que a un señor de treinta años, llamado Jerôme Kerviel y al que seguramente consideraban un genio, no lo supervisaron suficientemente. El tipo arriesgó hasta 50.000 millones de dólares en los mercados financieros y ha causado una quiebra de 5.000 millones. ¿Qué hay detrás? Una falta de control que se repite a lo largo de la historia. Comparaba este caso con el del Barings Bank, que en 1995 colapsó porque otro de sus empleados perdió 1.400 millones de dólares en el mercado de derivados de Singapur. La pérdida fue menor pero tumbó al banco más antiguo de Gran Bretaña. Luego, este banco fue comprado por el holandés ING por el precio simbólico de una libra.

Q&A: “We Are Haunted By a War Begun Under False Pretences”
Interview with Chuck Lewis, founder of the Centre for Public Integrity

WASHINGTON, Jan 23 (IPS) - Eight key players in the George W. Bush administration, including the president himself, made at least 935 false statements in the run-up to and aftermath of the invasion of Iraq in 2003.These are some of the findings of a mammoth report just released by the Centre for Public Integrity, directed by founder Chuck Lewis.

Lewis asked his researchers to track every utterance by the top U.S. officials made from Sep. 11, 2001 through Sep. 11, 2003, regarding Iraq, “weapons of mass destruction”, and the alleged link between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. These officials include President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and former White House press secretaries Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan.

What this report proves is remarkable, even though it is now a matter of public record that there were no WMD in Iraq and that the attacks against the U.S. in 2001 had no connection to Saddam Hussein.

Lewis concludes in a statement: “Clearly, this Iraq chronology calls into question the repeated assertions of Bush administration officials that they were merely the unwitting victims of bad intelligence. More broadly, consider the timeless words of the late historian and Librarian of Congress, Daniel Boorstin, in his classic 1961 work, “The Image”: ‘We suffer primarily not from our vices or our weaknesses, but from our illusions. We are haunted, not by reality, but by those images we have put in place of reality.’ America went to war nearly five years ago after an orchestrated campaign of false statements by the nation’s top officials, a war begun under the illusion of an imminent national security threat. We are haunted by a war begun, in other words, under false pretences.”

Lewis spoke with IPS’s Editor in Chief Miren Gutierrez about what he says is “an unprecedented, 380,000-word, online searchable, public and private Iraq war chronology, the public statements interlaced with the internal knowledge, discussions, doubts, and dissent known at the time. What they said publicly juxtaposed against what they knew internally.”

IPS: You have tagged how many false statements were made by these top officials over the two years. How many exactly? Can you make any comparisons?

CL: We found 935 false statements… Bush made the most statements; McClellan the fewest. No one has ever done this for any other U.S. war, to my knowledge, a public and private chronology of what they said versus what they knew internally. There is no comparison to the past.

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En español

Q&A: ‘Everybody leaves the Forum happier, wiser and stronger’
Interview with Roberto Savio, member of the International Committee of the World Social Forum

ROME, Jan 9 (IPS) - Roberto Savio is probably among the best informed insiders at the World Social Forum (WSF). He has been on its international committee since it was created in 2001, and since 2003 he has been coordinator of the ‘media, culture and counter-hegemony’ thematic area.

He founded the Inter Press Service (IPS) news agency in 1964, as well as other news and information organisations, always with an emphasis on the developing world. He is now IPS President Emeritus. He is co-founder of Media Watch International, based in Paris, and Chairman of the Board of the Alliance for a New Humanity, a foundation promoting the culture of peace.

Savio speaks with IPS Editor-in-Chief Miren Gutiérrez about the future of the WSF.

IPS: The World Social Forum (WSF) is an anti-globalisation movement, using the term ‘globalisation’ in a doctrinal sense, not a literal one. But the WSF is a global phenomenon…

Roberto Savio: The WSF is not a movement against globalisation; it is a movement against the kind of globalisation which is based only on the values of market and profit. That is a globalisation spawned by the Washington Consensus, the call for a New International Order made in the late eighties by the International Financial Institutions and the U.S. Treasury Department.

It also coincided with the collapse of the Berlin Wall, and an unprecedented return to unilateralism in international relations, based on hegemony, military might, and the idea that the interests of the U.S. were automatically the interests of humankind, as President (George) Bush declared several times. The result of this kind of globalisation was to marginalise the United Nations, international law, and the call for social justice, sustainable development and other values which are enshrined in the constitutions of practically all countries.

Those who identify themselves with the WSF want another globalisation, where social justice, participation, democracy and people are also values. It is significant that when we started in 2001, we were considered a fringe movement; even by then President of Brazil. Now, seven years later, nobody defends any longer the Washington Consensus. The damages it did worldwide have prompted the IFIs to do some significant corrections, and even the Bush administration is having several changes of route.

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En español… 

POLITICS: Is There a Gender-Specific Leadership Style?
By Miren Gutiérrez*

ROME, Jan 9 (IPS) - Is there a female way to lead? Chilean President Michelle Bachelet has raised that possibility in saying that she tries to lead through consensus, not by imposition. “While not wishing to generalise, many women have leadership styles that have been described as ‘empowering leadership’ or ‘consensual leadership’, where they build leadership structures that share responsibilities according to the ‘best fit’, and in doing so, often create new types of leadership,” Ayesha Kajee, researcher at the South African Institute of International Affairs and board member of Transparency International’s South Africa chapter, tells IPS.“Since women also tend to discuss problems more openly and utilise ‘group-think’ to seek solutions, such solutions are often more acceptable to teams. Some have described these as inherently female ways of interacting, but these styles can and should be learnt by both men and women leaders.”

An example, Kajee says, is Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, who has “clearly indicated that she intends to bring feminine qualities to the Liberian presidency, a very important component in a country which has been decimated and devastated by horrendous crimes and human rights violations.

“But this is not to say that these qualities negate the need for a strong leader in Liberia. She has both — the traditional strength of will, ambition and determination associated with African leaders, which will prevent her being abused by the old boys’ club because she can fight most battles on equal terms with them, and also the nurturing, reconciliatory and healing qualities that her shattered nation requires to rebuild the national spirit and collective human dignity.”

Inevitably, a suggestion of any specifically female style of leadership is controversial.

Joanne Sandler, deputy executive director for programmes at the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), says she is reluctant to buy into the “essentialist argument” that women have a different way of leading.

“Some evidence tends to be true, but you cannot say all women build consensus and men don’t. But I think it is also true that in countries whose parliaments have more than 30 percent of women, where women can more easily access positions of leadership, they tend to get outcomes that address women’s rights more frequently, and other types of rights, so political negotiation is probably vulnerable to gender difference to some extent.”

In places where you have more than 30 percent of women in parliament or congress, “child care policy, security, education, issues that are often associated with women, begin to emerge. I don’t mean that men don’t care about them; but I think that there is evidence that the theory of critical mass is a valid one.”

Charlotte Bunch, executive director of the Centre for Women’s Global Leadership at Rutgers University in the U.S., tells IPS that “there is a more collaborative style of leadership that more women like and find comfortable. And women are more likely to do that, but I don’t call it female’ because some men are like that, while some women aren’t… But it is a cultural construction our world needs more of.”

Men can take the right decisions for women, too. “I think change comes about not only because of who the president is, but also because of who she or he appoints,” says Sandler.

“In Rwanda, a male head of state (Paul Kagame) has been very supportive of a gender equality policy, and as a result Rwanda has the highest percentage of women in the low and high houses of parliament. The combination of a supportive president and more women in key positions transforms the political structure, and then you start seeing changes.”

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En español

POLITICS: Mum, Can a Man be President?
By Miren Gutiérrez*

ROME, Jan 9 (IPS) - “Do you think a man could ever be president?” the little boy in Ireland asks his mother. All his life he has only seen women presidents, currently Mary McAleese.Joanne Sandler, deputy executive director for programmes at the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), tells this little anecdote to show that in some places it can be routine for women to be found in leadership roles.

“In places like Ireland and Finland it is becoming less extraordinary to see a woman in power,” says Sandler. And it is this kind of female power that could bring more women into leadership, she says.

“When you see women in positions of power, in ministries, obviously the self-image of girls changes, and they envision themselves in those places. But that kind of change will take a very long time, though it has started,” she adds.

The change does not necessarily correspond to a nation’s level of economic development.

Italy ranks 84 in the latest Gender Gap Index (GGI) of the World Economic Forum, where the number one marks the smallest gap. That places it behind Bolivia (80), Peru (75) or Armenia (70), even though it is among the world’s biggest economies.

Panama is number 38 among 128 countries surveyed, while Liberia with Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf as president is not ranked. Sri Lanka is ranked 15, the United States 31, Argentina 33, Mongolia 62, Indonesia 81, Nicaragua 90 and Bangladesh 100. The Philippines fares extraordinarily well at number six, after Sweden, Norway, Finland, Iceland and New Zealand. Pakistan ranks 126, with the biggest gap only after Yemen (128) and Chad (127).

Like national wealth, personal wealth is not an essential pre-requisite. “There is not a relationship between more money and less gender discrimination,” says Sandler. “Money and power have an influence in those women achieving power. But money alone doesn’t explain it.

“Look at the elections in Liberia. A woman who has education, a former employee of the World Bank and the U.N., with an impressive resume, against a man who had no high school education, a soccer player (George Weah). Imagine the opposite: against a man with Johnson-Sirleaf’s background, would a woman with Weah’s credentials be a serious contender? To be a contender for high level political office, women have to bring a lot of extra qualities in order to get into the race. They need the same things as a man, plus others.”

Ayesha Kajee, researcher at the South African Institute of International Affairs and board member of Transparency International’s South Africa chapter, says “money is most certainly a partial equaliser for women, in terms of access — access to education, capital, property and opportunity. But even amongst wealthy elites, men tend to wield considerably more power than women. Thus, wealth does not guarantee equity between men and women.”

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En español

POLITICS: For Women, Leaning Doesn’t Make For Leading
By Miren Gutierrez**

ROME, Jan 9 (IPS) - “A woman who enters politics changes; a thousand women who enter politics change politics,” Chilean President Michelle Bachelet told the Spanish television channel TVE in a recent interview.It is the former that seems to ring more true. Most powerful women, particularly though not only in developing countries, are or have been members of elite families: widows, daughters, wives of powerful men, in societies where women do not have equal access to most things.

The list of female rulers who have derived their leadership from men is a long and telling one.

Mireya Moscoso (president of Panama from 1999-2004) was widow of three times former president Arnulfo Arias (who was deposed each time by the military). Before her, Isabel Martínez de Perón was president of Argentina from 1974-1976, following the death of her husband, President Juan Domingo Perón. Argentina has just elected its second woman president: Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, who succeeded her husband Néstor Kirchner (2003-2007) in December.

The success — or succession — of women began in Asia in recent times with Sühbaataryn Yanjmaa, widow of Mongolian hero Sühbaatar. She was the equivalent of head of state from Sept. 23, 1953 to Jul. 7, 1954. “If we consider such a post as having a real ruling status, she would have been (excepting queens) the absolute first woman political ruler in contemporary history,” says Zárate’s Political Collections (ZPC), a record of worldwide leadership.

Corazon Aquino was president of the Philippines from 1986 to 1992, after her husband Benigno Aquino — the leader of the opposition against dictator Ferdinand Marcos — was assassinated. Chandrika Kumaratunga, Sri Lankan president from 1994-2005, followed in the footsteps of her mother Sirimavo Bandaranaike, three times prime minister, a rare instance of a woman taking leadership after another female family member.

Benazir Bhutto, assassinated Dec. 27, was Pakistani prime minister from 1988-1990 and again from 1993-1996. She was the daughter of former premier Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.

Megawati Sukarnoputri, daughter of Sukarno (Indonesia’s first post-colonial president 1945-1967), led the world’s largest Muslim country from 2001-2004, and is expected to seek the post again in 2009. In Bangladesh, arch-enemies Sheikh Hasina and Khaleda Zia have both served as prime ministers and as heads of the two largest political parties. Hasina’s late father and Zia’s late husband ran the country at different times.

“These women share dynastic origins and ‘inherited’ political leadership,” says the German government-funded research report ‘Dynasties and Female Leadership in Asia’.

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En español

Un libro de Miren Gutiérrez sigue los pasos de Marc Harris, “uno de los mayores estafadores del Caribe”

la periodista donostiarrapresenta la obra ‘la ciudad de las cigarras’

La escritora ha comenzado a escribir su segundo libro, un trabajo que también excava en la historia negra de Panamá

Miren Gutiérrez en una presentación anterior de su libro.Foto: iban aguinaga

elene arrazola

El martes, día 18 de diciembre, soy la invitada en una rueda de prensa sobre mi novela La Ciudad de las Cigarras, en la Biblioteca Central, a las 12:30, y en una tertulia literaria, en el mismo lugar, a las 19:30, organizada por Donostia Kultura. Me presenta Beatriz Monrreal.

TERTULIAS LITERARIAS
18 de diciembre. 19:30.

BIBLIOTECA CENTRAL (San Jeronimo)

Dinamizadora: Beatriz Monrreal.
La autora asistirá a la tertulia.

La ciudad de la cigarras

Q&A: ‘If Journalism Becomes Further Marginalised, Look Out, World…’
Interview with Chuck Lewis, Fund for Independence in Journalism

ROME, Oct 29 (IPS) - Shrinking newsrooms, declining sales and audiences, vanishing foreign correspondents, concentration of ownership, shrivelling papers…is journalism imploding? Can independent journalism survive?

“Yes,” says Chuck Lewis, founder of the Centre for Public Integrity, and one of the most respected voices in journalism today. And the answer is non-profit journalism.

Lewis is a former producer of the CBS show 60 Minutes, and a journalist-in-residence at American University in Washington. He has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, Christian Science Monitor, Columbia Journalism Review, The Nation, and many other publications. A pioneer of the non-profit model, Lewis speaks with Miren Gutierrez, IPS Editor-in-Chief about the future of journalism.

IPS: So, the news is that in-depth, independent journalism may endure…But investigative reporting is expensive, it could be risky too. Who will pay for it?

Chuck Lewis: Civic-minded, wealthy individuals who believe in the concept of an “informed citizenry” and public service journalism — local, regional, national, international…Great work itself will begin to attract “buzz” online, and other revenue sources could open up, from advertising, to subscribers/members, to paid partnerships with existing hollowed out media corporations desperately seeking content, etc. In some parts of the world, such as Europe, government funding or direct public subsidies (as with the BBC) are possible too, with its related issues…

IPS: In your recent article ‘The Non-profit Road: It’s paved not with gold, but with good journalism’, you say that while increasingly newspapers will develop into “print-digital hybrids” (an expression coined by Robert Kuttner, co-founder and editor of the liberal U.S. magazine The American Prospect), advertising revenue is still to come up to editorial payroll levels. So what happens in the meantime?

CL: In the meantime, downsizing will continue, bureaus will close, investigations will not be undertaken or funded…Some media organisations will cease to exist or become unrecognisable vis-à-vis news as we have known it…Celebrity-headline-entertainment-sport-weather pap instead, masquerading as “news”.

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