#132 – The Expat Files: Life, Law, and Justice in Latin America

Automatically transcribed from the original recording; names and wording may contain errors.

[00:03] Hi everybody, I'm Johnny Mueller and you're listening to The Expat Files, living in Latin America. The show that tells you what it's really like to live, work, play and or retire in Latin America. I tell it just like it is, not the version they give you in those glossy travel magazines, or the picture they paint for you in those international traveler websites, where they're only trying to sell you something. What's it really like for expats living in Latin America? Well, it's time to take off those rose colored glasses and find out. So let's get started. Now I want to talk about something that's been in the news lately. I don't know if you've seen this or not or have been paying attention, but there's just been a great scandal down in Honduras. Turns out in one of the big penitentiaries down there, 355 inmates died in a gigantic

[00:49] fire that burned practically the whole penitentiary down. Now it's been all over the news down here lately, and all the high level politicians in Honduras have been giving plenty of face time to the media, expressing their sadness and horror at the situation, and asking first world countries for international help and aid, which of course means money and freebies like fleets of cars, ambulances and forensic units, all in hopes that they can sort out the mess. Find out what the circumstances were and make sure that it never happens again, and they emphasize that with international help of course, they'll be able to identify forensically the charred bodies, contact the victims' families, and hold proper funeral arrangements and services. And that's the line they're handing the media, they're doing the usual politically correct thing governments do when they massively screw up. But that's not at all what people in the know and government officials are saying behind

[01:36] closed doors at the privileged parties and events that they attend down here in Central America. I mean when the big wigs are talking amongst themselves, when they're making comments for their ears only, and of course my ears because I'm a great snoop, don't you know? But the reality check on this and what I'm hearing on the street, is that Honduran government officials are actually quite happy about this. Because first of all, 355 of the worst incarcerated criminals are now dead. And believe me, down here in Latin America, the most horrible people are in the prisons, and they belong there. And no matter what you've heard in the first world press, these were some really bad boys. Now here's something you didn't know, unlike in the United States, where about 10% of the people that are incarcerated have committed some kind of white collar non-violent crime, and about 50% more are in jail because of drug related offenses, with a lot of those

[02:24] US citizens, users and not sellers. Like for example, possession of a few ounces of marijuana or a couple of grams of cocaine. Small amounts that almost never get a first time offender, a jail sentence. But once you've been caught two or three times with small amounts of marijuana or cocaine, in the US you often do end up in the slammer. Whereas down here in Latin America, there are practically zero people incarcerated for that kind of thing. In almost every Latin American country, you might as well say that the police just laugh when they catch a person with a small amount of drugs. They usually just take it from you and fine you, or just take it from you. So even though laws are on the books against the possession of marijuana, cocaine and the like, it's virtually decriminalized. And as far as white collar crime, forget it. No one down here in Latin America ever goes to jail for a white collar crime.

[03:09] Because you see, civil offenses like for example embezzling money from your company, or stealing from government coffers, well guess what? If you do get caught for something like that, the court will hand down a prison sentence alright. Sometimes a pretty lengthy one. But guess what? They'll also give you a chance to pay a fine and buy your way out of it completely. Now I'm talking about civil cases here. Not criminal cases where someone's actually been assaulted, hurt, kidnapped or killed. Then if you get caught, you'll do some prison time. And unless you have important friends on the inside of government, or you have some very good connected lawyers, you won't be able to buy your way out. Though if you are a high placed person, and get caught for example, killing your wife, if you got the money, you can live out your years in prison like a king, believe me. Now if you remember those godfather movies, when some of the big dons went to prison,

[03:55] remember that? They actually had more than one cell, one used for a kitchen, one for a bedroom, one for a dining room, all nicely appointed with things from home like sofas and end tables and ottomans and lamps and photos of the family all around, you remember that? And some of those mafia dons, if you remember, had their own personal cooks and personal secretaries. A male secretary of course, usually someone like Cousin Vinny. Anyway, that's what happens down here in Latin America, if you're a high profile guy from an important family and you happen to go to jail for let's say killing your wife because she's having an affair. Oh and by the way, some of these guys who do kill their wives or their wife's lover often never go to jail at all because down here it's a very macho society, and crimes of passion very definitely hold some weight in the legal system, though they're not supposed

[04:40] to. And that of course depends on the judge that you get, and whether the judge himself has a happy marriage or his wife has been screwing around on him. The fact is down here in Latin America, it's not as much about the letter of the law, it's more about personality, status and the class system. Because you see, down here, high level political prisoners, congressmen for example who've been caught red handed stealing vast amounts of money from the public till, very rarely do those guys actually go to jail. They either like I said buy their way out because the judge lets you do that, or if it's a criminal case and there has to be a mandatory jail sentence, by the time the courts issue a warrant for the guy to have him picked up, he's been tipped off way in advance and is long gone from the country. And because virtually all high level politicians in Latin America steal and skim tremendous amounts from government coffers, and they lavish so many gifts, financial and otherwise,

[05:29] on their staffs and their friends and their families, if they do manage to steal so much that they're over the top and get into some hot water, that's when they start calling in the favors. And the first favors they call in of course, are with the judges and magistrates that they know, whom they helped get elected, and whose campaigns they've pushed along and helped finance. Not to mention a lot of these magistrates and judges actually got their jobs because the congressman is actually related to them somehow or is a childhood buddy or college friend. Because like I said in a past show, government jobs are all about nepotism and who you know. But let me get back to the point of how white color criminals and those high level government employees who get caught with their hand in the till, how they end up getting tipped off and fleeing the country, before the real feces hits the fan. Well as you might imagine, most of these guys end up with vast amounts of money in offshore

[06:17] banking accounts and in private bank accounts in first world places like Luxembourg and Switzerland. Because you see, most of these guys are smart enough to know that they should be putting their money in countries with heavy banking secrecy and or countries with no extradition treaty. And here's something you might not know, if you're a United States citizen and you pack your money off to a foreign country, almost all other countries have an extradition treaty with the United States. And if you're a country that decides not to sign an extradition with the United States, well then the United States will just make sure or lay down a threat that your country just won't get much international aid anymore or they'll drop you from favored nation status. And that's a really big deal for small countries, when it comes to economic treaties and things like tariffs and taxes. And that's why almost every country has an extradition treaty with the United States.

[07:03] So if your country gets on the wrong side of the US state department, the United States can make or break you economically, simply by pulling that all important favored nation trading status. But a country, let's say like Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua, or Salvador, even if they have signed criminal extradition treaties with the United States, they quite conveniently and purposely don't sign those kind of treaties with other third world countries. And that's why an ex-president of a country like Nicaragua or Guatemala can steal countless millions from the public coffers. And a few years down the road, once he's out of office, someone digs around and discovers the malfeasance, or some insider just blows the whistle on him, well by then he's usually off in some foreign third world country enjoying his riches and living like a Saudi prince. And the thing is, every Latin American country has a president, vice president or two, and

[07:52] a lot of congressmen that are fugitives from the law in their country and they're living like kings in some other part of the world and often in a neighboring country. Because third world countries are notorious for not signing extradition agreements with other third world countries. Which to me and a lot of expats, sounds like kind of a handshake under the table deal. It's as if third world congresses and presidents are saying to each other, unofficially of course, since we're all guilty of skimming and stealing, and eventually when we're out of office we'll lose our diplomatic immunity in our own countries, and if we get caught we just might go to jail. So we'll take your thieves and you can take ours. One hand washes the other. And though all of us expats believe that's the case, even some first world European countries don't have extradition agreements with some third world Latin countries.

[08:38] And maybe it's because they just didn't get around to it, who knows. But right now, if you take Switzerland for example, it's been estimated that there are over a hundred high level government officials from third world Latin American countries living the life of Riley in Switzerland. All of them fugitives from justice in their own countries, but Switzerland refuses to extradite them. And Swiss government officials usually give the excuse, saying that if these guys were extradited back to their home countries, they wouldn't be able to get a fair trial. And that's because a country like for example Nicaragua, when they find out that one of the former ministers of education in their country is sitting pretty in Switzerland after a few million bucks is discovered missing from the education fund, well when Nicaragua officially petitions Switzerland and says they are requesting extradition for the ex-minister,

[09:25] well what happens is this, the ex-minister appears in front of a magistrate, a Swiss magistrate with his battery of lawyers, presenting his case against extradition, saying that he can't get a fair trial in his own country due to the corruption and nepotism within the system, well believe it or not most times the first world country like Switzerland falls for it and though it may be true that he can't get a fair trial, that's exactly what he's counting on. All bigwig lanterns in his position use that same defense to try to put the kibosh on extradition. It's a nice catch-22 that works almost every time. And that's why right now hundreds if not thousands of Latin American ex-politicians are living the life of Riley in someone else's country, unbothered and unmolested, while under a permanent extradition order from their home country.

[10:12] And actually what that means is they'll never be able to go back to their home country because they'll face charges. But what do they care if they ever go back if they're sitting pretty with a ton of dough in a place like Switzerland? Oh and by the way right now Switzerland is the new home of at least four ex-government ministers from Guatemala who served on the cabinet of ex-president Portillo who himself is under house arrest in Guatemala for the second time after stealing over $100 million when he was president. And by the way presently he's being extradited to the United States for money laundering charges and then after that trial is over and he serves his sentence he'll be going to France to face money laundering charges there as well. Anyway four of his cabinet ministers are sitting pretty in Switzerland right now living in million dollar chalets and one of them happens to be the ex-chief of police for the whole

[10:58] country of Guatemala. And by the way that guy was appointed to the position of national police chief without having one ounce of experience as a policeman, a police chief or any experience in law enforcement whatsoever which is par for the course in Latin American politics. The reality is this ex-chief of police just happened to be the out of work son of ex-president Portillo's good friend and the son's only qualifications for the job besides that was that he drove a late model Harley Davidson and had a massive personal gun collection. But he's been in Switzerland the last few years and won't be extradited because his lawyers have said if he goes back he can't get a fair trial and Swiss courts have agreed with that. But it's alright for a guy who didn't have much of a job to live in a multi-million dollar Swiss chalet. Isn't anybody wondering how that happened?

[11:43] Oh and while I'm on the subject of being able to buy your way out of a jail sentence in Latin America here's some recent news that reinforces that premise. Listen to this. I'm reading from a big Panama newspaper that I have in front of me. It says Ernesto Perez Baldares ex-president of Panama from 1994 to 1999 has just been given a one year prison sentence. It turns out that he and 14 of his people in his own cabinet and others very close to him received huge quantities of money from international casino companies for giving them the concession to operate in Panama during his presidential period of 1994 to 1999. So you might be wondering why is this guy sticking around Panama with all the millions he and his buddies have taken in casino kickbacks when someday some investigators bound to uncover

[12:29] the mess. When there's that kind of money and that number of people involved no one can keep their mouths shut forever and it's predictable that a scandal like that would have broken some 10 to 12 years later and that's generally what happens. Down here no one uncovers the graft and corruption in a former president's term until 5 or 10 years after the fact. So why did this guy stick around? I'll tell you why because it's a civil not a criminal offense and the courts as usual are allowing him to buy his way out of the jail sentence by giving him the option to either go to jail which he won't or pay a fine of $3,000 how do you like that and you see that all the time in the newspapers down here. Someone gets a sentence of 2, 3 or 5 years and it's always ridiculously cheap to pay your way out. It's like in those old John Wayne cowboy movies when a horse thief goes to court if they don't

[13:15] hang him they always say $30 or 30 days. For example I saw a case like that last week in a Salvador newspaper where a banker got 2 years for embezzlement but was allowed to pay off the sentence at the rate of $3 a day so he was able to get out of a 2 year jail term by paying the court the equivalent of about $2,000, $1,000 a year. Now you might think I've gotten way off the point. When I first started this program today I was talking about that huge penitentiary fire in Honduras where 355 prisoners were burned to death. And I mentioned how all the high level politicians have been on the news talking about how sad and what a terrible tragedy it's been and that now they're asking for international help to resolve the present prison crisis and identify all the victims for their families of course. Well my point is that behind closed doors they're all saying wow this is a good thing

[14:04] we just got rid of 355 of our worst criminals. In fact one medium level politician told me a joke about it the other day. He said this joke's making the rounds in the halls of congress around Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras. And the joke goes like this. What has 10,000 tattoos and smells like pizza? And the answer is Comayagua which is the name of the prison. And I know it's not funny at all to us gringos but latins never did have a sophisticated sense of humor. They have a very long lag time with that too. But the point is politicians are telling jokes about it. And behind the scenes they're high five in each other. They got rid of 355 of the worst criminals. They're not white collar criminals and small time drug users like half the population in the prisons in the first world. These guys were really hardened psychopathic criminals in that prison. All of them with multiple convictions like rape and murder, armed robbery and kidnapping.

[14:54] In fact one cop told me you don't even get into that prison unless you've decapitated someone or massacred somebody's family. So naturally politicians are happy about getting rid of those guys. But on the streets of Honduras it's the same way. You talk to the average man and he's breathing a sigh of relief saying is gusto condanación de Dios which means basically it's the will of God. He condemned them all to death. The fact is nobody's shedding a tear for these guys except hypocrite latin politicians and the first world press. The people on the street are actually happy about it. Nobody's calling for prison reform except the politicians who have to do a PR spin on it and try to seem sad and concerned about it. They have to try to look like they feel for the families of these guys. Like they really give a damn. While as pure hypocrites as politicians always are, they got rid of 355 of their worst citizens

[15:44] and at the same time they're going to get that aid from the first world. They're counting on that bleeding heart first world money to start pouring in. They've already been promised money, ambulances, fleets of trucks, first world forensic units and even an offer from South Korea to donate the funds and the resources to build a brand new first world style prison. While the guy on the street says, forget about all that first world health, that aid doesn't do the common man any good. It only pads the pockets of politicians and government workers. What the guys in the street are saying is what the government Honduras really ought to do is bring back that death penalty. Which since it was abolished in 1956 allowed prisons like Comayagua to be filled to the brim with nothing but murderers and sociopaths. And what the politicians are saying behind closed doors is that if they did have the

[16:31] death penalty they wouldn't have prisons like that at all. They'd be doing society a big favor by bringing back the lethal injection. Oh and by the way, you certainly can't always believe what you hear in the first world press about things that happened down here in Latin America, especially now regarding this Honduran prison blaze. We notice that some of the first world media is saying that half the people in this prison were never even convicted of a crime and that they were just being held there awaiting trial. And I've also heard the first world press say that down in Honduras they have a law that says if you have a gang tattoo the police can put you in prison. But you see that's how twisted things can get when they finally get the news up in the first world and they put their liberal spin on it. Here's the facts, you don't go to prisons like that unless you've already got a horrendous felony on your record. But it is true that throughout Latin America prisons are used to hold people who are accused

[17:19] of a high felony and are awaiting trial. Because what you don't know is this, 90% of male teenagers and young adults when released on a signature bond just never show up for their trial. They'll just disappear into the slums of some big city and show up in the hands of the officials again once they've been caught committing another crime. So you can see the problem here, it's not like the first world you post a bail or a bond which can be in the tens of thousands of dollars if it's a pretty substantially heavy felony. And in fact some people have to put their house or their car up as collateral to the bondsman because that way they know you're going to show up for the trial. But down here the vast majority of people don't have anything to collateralize. They have no cash and own no cars or houses so they can't get a bond. And if they've been accused of committing a pretty substantial crime they're naturally

[18:06] going to be held until their trial in a jail or a prison. And the only class of people that can actually put up money for a bond are wealthy white colored criminals who usually turn out to be government officials who've been consistently stealing from the public trough so they have money and property to put up to the bail bondsman. Whereas the average guy who has nothing and maybe makes two or three hundred bucks a month, if they don't hold him in jail till his trial he'll just skip. And anyway my sources tell me that these big prisons like Comayagua are not the places that judges send first time non violent offenders who are waiting to be tried but they can't pay bond. It turns out that first time and non violent offenders are held in low security jails close to the court where they're going to get tried. Not shipped out to the boonies a place like Comayagua which is some fifty miles away from where they're supposed to get tried in Tegucigalpa.

[18:52] So the big problem I have with the way the first world media portrays third world tragedies like this. They insinuate that when you're down in Honduras and you get picked up for a crime they just throw you in jail to rot and you lose all your rights. But they never tell you that when the average guy is picked up for a crime if you don't put him in jail he'll skip out ninety percent of the time and not show up in court. He'll just disappear. So a signature bond doesn't do much good down here. You know just signing a form that says on a certain date you're going to show up at the court on your own recognizance. Now that might work okay in a white collar non violent crime case but if it's anything having a jail sentence hanging over it the guy's just likely to skip. But I do have to remind you that everything I've been talking about up to this time is all about the local citizens of a Latin country not expats. And it's nothing you really have to worry about because you as an expat will have your

[19:40] own personal lawyer and if something does happen while you're down here he'll take care of it. If you're involved in a civil case if you're at fault you'll most likely pay a very small fine and it'll be over with. And even if you're kind of a bad boy and commit a violent crime believe it or not the gringo advantage works in the judicial system too and hopefully you'll never be in that situation but you'll find that because you're a gringo judges are inclined to be quite lenient on you and of course your lawyer will always explain to the judge that you are a gringo and don't know the finer details of Latin law. So down here ignorance of the law as an excuse does seem to work in a gringo's favor. Now I've been down here about 20 years and I know a lot of gringos and a lot of expats and I've heard my share of stories about their encounters with police and the judicial system and in all those hundreds of encounters that I've had with gringos and first world foreigners

[20:30] I only know of one case where a person has actually spent time in jail down here and his lawyer got him out after three days and they dismissed the case. Now if he didn't have a lawyer he'd probably still be there and I think it's a story worth repeating because I don't believe it could ever really happen to a gringo not the way it happened to him because although he was a foreigner he was a foreigner from Colombia moving to Guatemala not technically an expat at all and I don't believe that this could have happened to a gringo because it was the Colombian connection that put a gray cloud over his head and his case when the police finally got involved. So his is a worst case scenario and this is how it went. About 10 years ago he emigrated up to Guatemala to start an architectural business. In the meantime he rented a house and some land on the side of a volcano and found he could grow anything there.

[21:15] It was some of the richest soil in the world. So he started growing a specialty fruit crop that grows in Colombia and it happened to grow very well in the soil in Guatemala too and because it was a specialty fruit he found buyers right away and was making a ton of money. Now he had a five year option to rent on this land and when the first year was up the owner sent him notice that he was tripling the rent and of course my friend had the original contract that said he had a fixed rent for five years. A few weeks later my friend gets summoned to court and the guy tried to break the contract. In fact the landlord produced a fraudulent contract that said that the deal only went year to year but my friend had the original contract and the judge bought his story instead of the landlord's and everything kind of settled down. That's what he thought anyway. Until one day about two months later three police squad cars came screaming into his

[22:03] driveway and they put handcuffs on him and two other cops went over to some potted plants he had on his porch and they confiscated those little pots which had four little marijuana plants growing in them about four inches high. Then they hauled my friend off to the police station some miles away. He called his lawyer and had an immediate arraignment with a judge well at least within two or three hours and that's another advantage of having a lawyer. Now if that lawyer wasn't around he would have been shoved in the general population of the local jail and he may have had to wait a few days to get that arraignment. Anyway when the judge found out it was a marijuana case and that he was from Colombia he ordered no bail and sent him to jail to await his trial. But here's what was really happening behind the scenes. The landlord wanted his land back because he saw how much money the Colombian guy was

[22:48] making selling those little fruits to specialty restaurants and hotels like the Marriott and the Hilton. But he had to get the Colombian guy off his land. So when the Colombian guy was in his office in town doing his architectural work the landlord sent someone over to the house to sow some marijuana seeds into the front porch potted plants. Then the landlord made a couple of phone calls and claimed there was a Colombian drug dealer growing a crop of marijuana. Now my Colombian friend's lawyer found out by hook and crook that the trial date probably wouldn't be for a couple of weeks or if not more. So his client would have to sit it out in jail. Stuck right in there with gang members, thieves, murderers and thugs and the lawyer's Colombian architect client was more of a cultured soft-spoken educated guy with a master's degree. The lawyer figured he wouldn't mix very well at all with these gangland types.

[23:36] So he asked the Colombian architect's wife for 3,000 US dollars and he told her that should be enough to take care of it. Now the lawyer didn't want to go to court because he knew even if he could get the guy off there would be three or four more court dates before it was all over. His client would have to spend weeks if not months in jail with all those bad boys. So he was a good Latin American lawyer and he spread that 3,000 bucks around and in three days he had his guy out. End of case, end of story. And as to what happened to my friend while he was in jail those three days, that's an interesting story too. It turns out the very first hour he was in there, a ratty looking guy with tattoos up and down his face and neck approached him and said, look, I can tell you're an educated straight up kind of guy. Things will go a lot easier for you down here if you pay me rent because I run this section

[24:22] of the prison. And it'll cost you only $200 US a month to have all your meals cooked and served to you and have complete protection 24 hours a day, have unlimited use of your cell phone and complete privacy in the bathroom anytime you want to use it. So my friend made a deal with him. He arranged for his wife to hand off $200 to a guy in the park outside of the prison and after that he was treated like royalty. And after three days after his lawyer had taken care of the proper grease on the outside and the guard told him that he could go, the head of the cell block came over and offered $150 to him saying that was his refund because he didn't stick out the whole month. In fact, he didn't even stick out a whole week and my friend said to him, no, go ahead and keep it. Enjoy yourself. Who knows? Someday we'll meet again on the outside and you can buy me a dinner or a drink or something.

[25:08] All the while my friend was thinking here was an opportunity to cultivate a friend that he'd probably never need and he figured why not leave on good terms. Anyway, as it turned out, the head of the cell block was so happy by the way the Colombian architect handled the whole thing. He pulled him aside and said, look, you're a good guy and I consider you my friend so I'm going to do you a favor. Then he asked my architect buddy the name of the guy that screwed him over, the landlord that planted those pot plants. But the architect decided not to tell him because if he showed up with his legs broken or in the bottom of a ravine, the revenge trail was obvious and it would certainly lead right back to him. So my friend said to the tattooed guy the famous last words of Don Corleone who said, revenge is a dish best served cold and the tattooed guy got it and he told my architect friend anytime you need a favor I owe you.

[25:55] So my architect friend said those three days he spent in jail were not really bad at all. He said it looked like a jail and it smelled like a jail but he didn't have to lift a finger and he did want for the average comfort in life either. He had a decent bed and a decent mattress, privacy anytime he needed it and a guy that came around once a day and cleaned the cell and a guy that came around once a day and cleaned the bathroom. And a guy came around to shine his shoes once in a while for nothing. And that's the hierarchy of the prison he said. The guys that don't have 200 bucks to pay a month, they end up shining shoes, cleaning toilets and sweeping out the place. For guys like him who can afford it. And just one last arrest story before I finish here. Now you often hear stories in the first world about cops planting marijuana and cocaine on people. And first world people express concern that it could happen down here.

[26:41] Well here's a little story that might change your mind about that. Don in Costa Rica played in a music group and the drummer was German and he really liked his marijuana. One day he was driving along in a busy middle class subdivision and he hit a guy on a bicycle. And there was a cop on the corner directing traffic and he stopped everything and led him off to the police station about 2 bucks away. Now the cops looked in his car and saw there was a bag of marijuana right on his shift council. So they took him into the police station and booked him. And of course he called his lawyer right away. The lawyer came down to the station within a half an hour. My friend gave his lawyer $100 and within 15 minutes the whole thing was over and forgotten. And here's the punchline. On the way out of the police station a cop walked up to my German friend and handed him back his bag of marijuana. But that was 15 years or so ago back in Costa Rica. I'll bet you these days it would have cost him 2 or 300 bucks to get out of that.

[27:29] And you know what? I bet he'd still get his pot back. You've been listening to The Expat Files, living in Latin America, coming to you each week from somewhere south of the border. And don't forget you can email me on anything at all about Latin America, The Expat Files at gmail.com. Once again, The Expat Files at gmail.com. See you next time. Nos vemos.