Ex-Spy Chief’s Family Is Feeling the Heat of Peru’s Investigation

The wife of former spy chief Vladimiro Montesinos offered a rare glimpse into his shadowy private life Wednesday, saying that his family has become a casualty of the Peruvian fugitive’s extraordinary odyssey.

Trinidad Becerra, who is under house arrest facing charges related to her husband’s allegedly illegal fortune, accused allies of exiled former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori of persecuting her. Although she said she hasn’t lived with her husband of 28 years since he became Fujimori’s intelligence chief in 1990, she expressed loyalty to the man she called her first love.

The widely reviled Montesinos has been on the lam for four months, fleeing charges of corruption and human rights abuses.

“I and my daughters were proud of him,” said Becerra, a retired schoolteacher and mother of two. “As a father and husband, he took care of us and gave us these little luxuries.”

Those luxuries apparently included overseas shopping sprees by Becerra and the couple’s 25-year-old daughter, who was arrested last week in Lima: One receipt shows that daughter Silvana spent $10,000 at New York boutiques in one day in 1999.

Becerra lashed out at prosecutors for jailing her daughter.

“What crime has my daughter committed in this sense?” she asked. “Tell me, is this justice in Peru?”

The arrest of Silvana Montesinos, a university student, was part of a hard-nosed anti-corruption drive against once-untouchable Peruvians. The growing list of suspects and fugitives includes half a dozen close relatives of Montesinos, two ex-chiefs of the armed forces and other military brass, high-ranking judges, legislators and a newspaper publisher.

Becerra, 51, received reporters in her 12th-floor apartment in the upper-middle-class San Isidro neighborhood. Looking pale and wearing her red hair in a ponytail, she recounted her woes in a firm voice. But she deferred further questions to her lawyer, who said Becerra was too distraught to answer.

The apartment that Montesinos has owned for 18 years is comfortable but not opulent, despite his gargantuan appetite for diamond watches and designer double-breasted suits. Instead of the 50 elite commandos who once protected the family, the building has been guarded during Becerra’s two-month house arrest by police whom she accuses of tapping her phones.

The walls of the apartment are decorated with religious art, a reproduction of a Velasquez painting and military plaques. A shelf held compact discs by Fleetwood Mac and Luis Miguel, the Mexican crooner.

Becerra’s description of her marriage could be seen as either disingenuous or poignant. She said her husband moved into the headquarters of the National Intelligence Service, or SIN, 10 years ago and saw his family only a few times a year.

The spy chief held birthday parties for his daughters at SIN headquarters, according to her account. A dutiful provider, he gave Silvana a MasterCard with a $25,000 credit limit because she excelled academically, Becerra said. The couple’s younger daughter is 15.

Wife Says Couple Last Spoke in September

Becerra denied knowledge of Montesinos’ alleged crimes or his whereabouts. She said she last spoke to him in September, when he fled to Panama after Fujimori fired him for allegedly bribing a legislator--a scene captured on videotape and made public by rivals.

Her lawyer insisted that Becerra knew nothing about Montesinos’ reputed romance with Jacqueline Beltran, his secretary. Life-size photos of Beltran decorated Montesinos’ beachfront hide-out, where police also found hidden cameras and an escape tunnel concealed under a bathtub trapdoor. Beltran has been jailed on corruption charges.

Becerra, meanwhile, faces charges related to an $18-million Swiss bank account linked to Montesinos that is also in her name. Although she admits traveling to Switzerland, Becerra said she didn’t know about the account. Montesinos allegedly had accounts in Switzerland, the United States, Uruguay and the Cayman Islands.

“Many times wives sign documents for their husbands without knowing what they are: insurance forms, visas--that was very normal,” she said. Montesinos’ income seemed justified because “we knew he was an important person. And he was a lawyer who did not neglect his consulting business, the defense of clients.”

Montesinos Allegedly Amassed $80 Million

As Fujimori’s gray eminence, Montesinos is accused of amassing about $80 million through control of court corruption and arms and drug trafficking. Moving with a speed and scope that are remarkable in Latin America, the investigations of him have also targeted Fujimori, whose power has faded since he took refuge in Japan in November and was ousted by the Peruvian Congress.

The arrest of Montesinos’ daughter demonstrates the aggressive, if not sometimes questionable, tactics of investigators. Montesinos’ siblings, a brother-in-law who is a general and other relatives are viable targets because they were allegedly involved in illegal schemes, prosecutors say.

Peruvian reformers are getting U.S. assistance. Ambassador John Hamilton said U.S. agencies are aiding the investigations and the international manhunt.

“Every agency is involved,” Hamilton said in an interview. “They are following up leads in the United States, answering specific questions, providing tips where he might be. There is full engagement. We have provided the Peruvians with information that they certainly thought was worth looking into.”

Asked if the U.S. agencies include the CIA, which has been criticized for maintaining close ties to Montesinos despite his sinister reputation, U.S. officials declined comment except to repeat the ambassador’s statement that “every agency” was involved.

Peruvian investigators used a new anti-corruption law to arrest Montesinos’ daughter, who is studying to be an English teacher and, according to her mother, was surrounded on the street by four police cars Saturday. Authorities say Silvana Montesinos should have known that her shopping sprees were funded by ill-gotten cash.

Those are ruthless tactics intended to pressure the fugitive spy chief and flush him out of hiding, according to Nancy Chiabra, the family lawyer.

“They are trying to break him,” Chiabra said. “They want him to show his face.”

Montesinos hasn’t been seen in public since October, when he was photographed in exile in Panama. He returned to Peru on Oct. 23. While Fujimori led a futile search for his onetime advisor--Becerra displayed a shattered door Wednesday that she said was knocked down by the president’s raiders--Montesinos fled Peru on a yacht Oct. 29, officials say.

Accompanied by three military bodyguards, the spymaster made his way to the Galapagos Islands, Costa Rica, Aruba and Venezuela, according to investigators and the subsequent testimony of the bodyguards.

The last unconfirmed sighting of Montesinos came in December. He reportedly stayed at a hotel in Caracas, the Venezuelan capital, between Dec. 7 and Dec. 13. According to Peruvian officials and press reports, doctors at a clinic in Caracas identified him as a man with a Venezuelan passport who underwent plastic surgery on his face--then skipped out on the bill as Peruvian police closed in.