Peru's former president Alberto Fujimori [2] admitted at the opening of his corruption trial July 20 that he had paid his spy chief Vladimiro Montesinos $15 million in public funds to quit as his regime collapsed in 2000. But he added: "I only accept the facts, I do not accept the criminal responsibility, the punishment or the civil reparations."
Chief Prosecutor Alvaro Guillen asked for eight years on the embezzlement charge, and that Fujimori pay $670,000 in reparations. Guillen said Fujimori had paid Montesinos shortly after a video of the spy chief bribing a lawmaker surfaced.
The ex-strongman faces two more trials for allegedly authorizing illegal phone taps, bribes to congressmen, and secretly buying a TV station for political propaganda with state money. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison in April for overseeing death squad activity that claimed 25 lives. (AP [3], July 20)
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