CASE STUDIES/203on the claims of foreign creditors and on contracts signed by officials
in the military dictatorship, even though such contracts had never
been approved by the central bank.
Nevertheless, the first post-dictatorship government of President
Alfonsin decided to honour the dictatorship era debt in its entirety,
public and private. Just as the military's torturers were amnestied
under the 1986 'Full Stop' and 'Obeying Orders' laws, so too were
those in charge of the dictatorship's economic policy treated with
clemency. Most of the dictatorship's top economic and financial
officials retained their jobs in the state apparatus; some were even
promoted. Military officials responsible for the repression that
claimed at least 30,000 lives also kept their jobs, or were granted
early retirement. A scandal erupted when one of them, Captain Astiz,
finally broke the rule of silence observed by the dictatorship's military
officials: 'In 1982, a friend asked me if there had indeed been disap
pearances. I replied, "Of course, there were 6,500, even more; but no
more than 10,000. All of them were eliminated.'" (Le Soir, 16
January 1998).
When the State Honours Private Debt
The long list of indebted private companies included the Argentinian
subsidiaries of MNCs: for example, Renault Argentina, Mercedes-
Benz Argentina, Ford Motor Argentina, IBM Argentina, Citibank,
First National Bank of Boston, Chase Manhattan Bank, Bank of
America and Deutsche Bank.
The Argentinian government paid off these private companies'
creditors: Renault France, Mercedes Benz, Citibank, Chase
Manhattan Bank, Bank of America, First National Bank of Boston,
Credit Lyonnais, Deutsche Bank and Societe Generale.
In other words, Argentinian taxpayers repaid debt contracted by
the subsidiaries of MNCs with their head offices, or with international
banks. It is reasonable to suspect that the MNCs in question actually
engineered the debt of their Argentinian subsidiaries with some
creative accounting. Argentinian government officials have no way
of verifying this information.
A Wave of Privatisation
In 1990-92, the government of Alfonsin's successor, Carlos Saul
Menem, undertook a vast programme of privatisation, selling off