Lover Saw Peru's Montesinos as Decent Workaday Man

reuters.com Fri February 21, 2003 12:09 AM ET By Missy Ryan

LIMA, Peru (Reuters) - The erstwhile lover of Peru's former spy chief, Vladimiro Montesinos, said on Thursday she admired and respected the man alleged to have shelled out bribes, made drugs and arms deals and even ordered murder, seeing him as "honorable" during their six-year affair.

"I never suspected anything bad about Montesinos. When I met him, he was an honorable person ... For me, he was a decent man and went to work and came home ... It was a quiet life," Jacqueline Beltran, her blonde hair draping a zebra-print top, told the court. "I admired him and respected him a lot."

"He never talked about his work ... When I asked him why he was tense ... he would say, 'No Mamita, I can't explain; you wouldn't understand,"' she added.

According to prosecutors, the work Beltran referred to included shelling out state funds for bribes, fixing court decisions and other back-room deals that led up to Peru's worst corruption scandal in history and sparked the downfall of Montesinos' boss, ex-President Alberto Fujimori.

Behind Beltran, Montesinos sat impassively with a tight frown on his face, barely looking at the woman he once took to Europe on holiday, bought a car for and set up in a luxurious beach house, and who wanted to have his children.

Beltran's testimony marked the second day of the Montesinos' first public trial, on charges of "influence peddling," which began this week, 29 months after the former head of Peru's intelligence agency was jailed on charges ranging from drug trafficking to money laundering to murder.

Prosecutors want five years for Montesinos and four years for Beltran for allegedly rigging a pardon for her brother, jailed on drug charges, and illegally helping her uncle in a business dispute.

She said Montesinos offered to help her brother, hotly denying that she pressured him for a favor.

Montesinos remained silent despite a battery of questions fired at him on Thursday. His lawyer, Estela Valdivia, said he would not testify because he was not guaranteed a fair trial.

MONTESINOS STAR OF SCANDAL

All of Peru was stunned in September 2000 when political opponents of Fujimori, who ruled this poor country for a decade, aired a video taped secretly by Montesinos in his office showing him paying a $15,000 bribe to a lawmaker.

Just weeks after the "Vladivideo" scandal erupted, Fujimori fled to Japan. A score of like videos followed.

Despite the government's efforts to get him back to Peru on corruption and human rights crime charges, Fujimori says he is innocent and is planning on running for president again.

Montesinos' trial -- under heavy security with snipers and armed guards -- had created expectations that Montesinos could offer explosive testimony. He admits to some crimes but denies the most serious and says he acted on Fujimori's orders.

While Beltran was Montesinos' lover since she had met him in 1994 and shared an apartment with him in Lima, she furiously accused him in the first day of the trial of trying to incriminate her in order to save himself from jail.

Montesinos -- flown by helicopter to the trial -- has been locked up in a six-person jail on a Lima naval base since he was captured in June 2001 in Venezuela.

A separate trial, on charges he bribed a former mayor, starts on Friday. According to Proetica, a private anti-corruption group, some 1,247 people have been investigated for links to corruption under Fujimori.