The declared inventory included broomsticks, orange squeezers, mugs, talcum powder, dentistry equipment and industrial tools, but The FARC’s Riches: List of Assets Fails to Reveal Guerrillas’ Total Wealth.
InSight Crime reports, that, for instance,
Much of the real estate listed by the FARC, which amounts to around half of all its assets, lacks any official registration, “which frankly makes it useless and inadmissible” to the inventory, Martínez wrote. As the ownership of these properties cannot be legally identified, the Attorney General’s Office has stated that “for now, none of the FARC’s real estate is immune to being seized” by authorities.
In the inventory, the FARC also “accepted as [their] own” any assets that state prosecutors may have uncovered in their investigations into the rebel group, without actually identifying these themselves. Authorities have already started seizing FARC assets worth nearly $580 million dollars, according to Martínez’s letter.
The term smoke screen comes to mind.
Looks like the Colombian authorities could use several independent forensic accountants: Estimates published by The Economist in 2016 suggested that the FARC’s total assets could surpass $11 billion, but the list only declared some $332 million (Datawrapper version of the summarized inventory here).
If you go by the inventory, the FARC has a measly US$450,000 cash on hand.
Walter White would put them to shame.
The FARC will be laughing all the way to the bank while the Colombian government spends $39+ billion pesos (US$13+ million) to finance the FARC’s political party.
Estado destinará más de $39 mil millones para financiar el partido político de Farc https://t.co/iwYdCP5Rbx via @BluRadioCo
— MaryAnastasiaO'Grady (@MaryAnastasiaOG) August 24, 2017
But don’t worry; Santos gets to keep his Nobel Prize.
Cross-posted at WoW! Magazine.
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