Former ford executives charged with crimes against humanity in Argentina.
| Autor | Gaudin, Andres |
The Argentine judiciary has begun investigating former top executives of the Argentina subsidiary of US-based Ford Motor Company during the 1976-1983 civilian-military dictatorship for crimes against humanity: kidnapping, torture, murder, and disappearance of persons. The executives could face life sentences (NotiSur, Dec. 2, 2011).
On Feb. 18, the former president of the multinational Nicolas Enrique Courard and three former executives, Pedro Muller, Guillermo Galarraga, and Hector Jesus Sibilla, joined the list of civilians under investigation for collusion with the military and benefitting from that collusion. During those bloody years, the regime's policies left 30,000 disappeared, thousands murdered, some 500 babies taken from their parents and given new identities, and tens of thousands of exiles.
The Ford case began two months after Carlos Pedro Blaquier, the "sugar czar," one of the most powerful tycoons in the country, was charged with the same crimes in the Ledesma case. It kicks off a year in which opening dates have been set in a series of cases that will examine the complicity of the business sector with the dictatorship, through trials of executives of the largest multinationals operating in the country. In all the cases, the companies participated in the repression in exchange for the disappearance of union activists or their defense lawyers.
The first trial of company executives occurred in March 2012 and involved Loma Negra, Argentina's largest cement company with subsidiaries in several South American countries. Two civilians were sentenced to 15 years in prison for the kidnapping and disappearance of labor lawyer Carlos Moreno.
Moreno had filed several lawsuits against the company after discovering that workers in the area where cement was bagged died at a much younger age, on average, than other workers at the plant. Moreno found that, because of poor occupational-health conditions, workers were contracting silicosis, a lung disease caused by prolonged breathing of silica dust. In coming months, members of the Loma Negra board of directors during the dictatorship will be tried.
The same fate awaits, among many others, former executives of the German car manufacturer Mercedes Benz, Italian-Argentine steel company Techint, paint factory Alba (a subsidiary of British Imperial Chemical Industries), cookie maker Terrabusi (a subsidiary of US-based Kraft Foods), and local newspapers Clarin, La Nacion, and La Nueva Provincia...
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