Where the Money Went

DOMINICAN REPUBLIC

For a family of political castaways, the Trujillos manage quite well for themselves. Rhadames Trujillo, 20. youngest son of the Dominican Republic's late unlamented dictator, spends his time in Madrid hanging around nightclubs and cracking up fancy sports cars. His older brother Ramfis, 33. who ruled the country for six months after his father's assassination, is a more serious type, with an ulcer. His major occupation these days is managing the loot the Trujillos carried with them when they took it on the lam from their tiny Caribbean fief.

How much the Trujillos squeezed out of the Dominican Republic in 31 years of misrule will probably never be known. But a respected, independent Swiss newspaper, Basel's National-Zeitung, has made an informed--and startling--estimate. It comes to $800 million, half in cash, half in stocks and bonds, the bulk of it said to be salted away in a neat little empire of numbered Swiss bank accounts and disguised European holding companies. The sum is about equal to one year's gross national product in the Dominican Republic.

Silent Partners. The National-Zeitung got its story from a former Trujillo official, who, having helped the Trujillos get the money out. was mad at not being cut in. The paper sat on the story for three weeks while it checked out the documents he produced to back up his story. Then the National-Zeitung published its fascinating account of how the Trujillos got their money out of the country in the months following the dictator's death.

Shortly after the dictator's assassination, it reports, the Trujillos deposited $35 million in the Bank of Nova Scotia under the name of three cover-up Canadian corporations: later, when the new Dominican government tried to recover the money from Canada, it was transferred to a Geneva bank. More millions poured directly into Switzerland through a network of front companies spread across the Continent. At least seven such fronts were set up in tiny, tax-haven Liechtenstein, and their funds were deposited in Swiss banks. When Swiss bankers were asked by the Dominican government not to accept Trujillo funds, two Geneva banks complied; on discovering the real name behind the numbered accounts, they gave Ramfis 24 hours to withdraw his deposit. But others were either less astute or cared little for a 1960 "gentleman's agreement" among Switzerland's bankers not to handle hot money.

According to the National-Zeitung, some of the money is being reinvested in profitable European companies. In one such deal, the Trujillos bought 70% control of Geneva's Banque Genevoise de Commerce et Credit. They also put $4,500,000 in cash into a new Luxembourg holding company called Societe Holding Bancaire et Financiere Europeene S.A. To the company's other founders, the Trujillos were known merely as the "Paris Group."

Silent Bankers. Most Swiss bankers were characteristically mum about the National-Zeitung's story, but showed no eagerness to refute it. In Madrid. Ramfis Trujillo called the story a "slanderous potpourri of half-truths, exaggerations and outright lies'' planted by a former secretary of his playboy brother Rhadames. He couldn't help feeling sorry for himself, in all his luxurious exile: "My entire life was marred and unhappy because I was the heir of Rafael Trujillo.''

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