David Graiver
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David Graiver was an Argentinean who was the money manager for the Montoneros guerrilla group. He reportedly invested $17 million in funds that the Montoneros had received from illicit activities, including kidnapping.
These investments included stores, real estate and a number of banks. He was linked with Jacobo Timerman, the publisher of La Opinion, which was partly owned by the Graiver family. He died in a mysterious plane crash in Mexico on August 7, 1976, although some (including Manhattan district attorney Robert Morganthau, who indicted him in 1978 for embezzlement) were skeptical that he was actually in the airplane. He reportedly looted $40 million from American Bank & Trust Co., which failed on September 15, 1976 and at that time represented the fourth largest bank failure in American history. Two days prior, Banque pour l'Amerique du Sud, a Belgian bank controlled by Graiver was closed. Two other banks controlled by the Graiver family also failed: the Argentinean Banco Comercial de la Plata and the Swiss-Israel Trade Bank in Switzerland. His indictment in 1978 alleged that he siphoned money from American Bank & Trust into Banque pour L'Amerique du Sud, which then loaned a large amount of monies to Graiver-controlled businesses. In 1979 a New York state Supreme Court judge ruled that Graiver was dead, although the judge still had some reservations. In August 1977 the chief of the Argentinean junta announced that surviving members of the Graiver family had been arrested for doing business with the Montoneros.[1]
After his death, his family was illegally arrested. His wife was tortured by the Argentinean military dictatorship to force her to sell her part of the company Papel prensa, the only producer of paper for newspapers in Argentina. The company was transferred by the governement to three of the biggest newpapers in the country, Clarín, La Nación and La Razón, pressumably on exchange of their silence about the state terrorism of the Argentinean National Reorganization Process.
References
1. ^ http://www.2facts.com/article/1977171320
* http://www.tabletmag.com/news-and-politics/16473/kristol-clear/
* http://www.natvan.com/national-vanguard/099/Argentina.html
* New York Magazine Jan 22, 1979 The Strange Life and Stranger Death of David Graiver
