Peru still owes finders' reward

May 5, 2002

LIMA, Peru (AP) - The stakes are dlrs 5 million. The competitors are a banker, a bodyguard and a private eye. The game should have been up nearly a year ago.

More than 10 months after Peru's fugitive former spy chief Vladimiro Montesinos was captured in Venezuela, the government has yet to pay a promised dlrs 5 million reward for the information leading to his capture.

According to an official decree, the money should have been paid within 24 hours of the arrest of Montesinos, the behind-the-scenes power broker accused of overseeing a vast criminal network in his 10 years as intelligence chief and top adviser to authoritarian President Alberto Fujimori.

In September 2000, a leaked videotape that showed Montesinos bribing a congressman sparked a scandal that led to Fujimori's downfall — he now lives in exile in Japan — and sent the spy chief into hiding, making him South America's most hunted criminal.

The April 2001 reward announcement came with the release of "Wanted" posters featuring a snapshot of Montesinos wearing gold-rimmed glasses and a sinister smirk, his slicked hair combed across his balding head.

Two months later a slimmer Montesinos, his face gaunt and pale, was led in handcuffs off a plane from Venezuela, where he had been captured days earlier.

During the eight-month manhunt, Peruvians followed reports and rumors that had Montesinos slipping out of Peru on a yacht named "Karisma" and headed for the remote Galapagos Islands, then skipping by boat and small plane through Central America and the Caribbean, eventually ending up in Venezuela.

Since his arrest on June 23, 2001, Montesinos has been jailed in a maximum-security naval prison. He awaits trial on at least 50 charges, including influence peddling, drug trafficking, arms smuggling and directing a paramilitary death squad.

Peru's deputy interior minister, Gino Costa, said that three men are in the running for the reward money and that their bids are being meticulously reviewed.

"I think we'll be in a position to announce the payment soon," Costa said.

Costa said the three claimants are Luis Percovich, a Peruvian-American vice president at Pacific Credit Corp. of Florida; Orlando Laufer, a Venezuelan private investigator; and Jose Guevara, a former Venezuelan police officer who was Montesinos' hired bodyguard in Venezuela .

According to Peruvian news reports, Percovich notified the FBI when Guevara tried to withdraw funds from an account belonging to Montesinos at Pacific Industrial Bank in Miami, part of Pacific Credit Corp.

The banker then cooperated in an FBI sting to trail and arrest Guevara after he allegedly tried to extort the money from the bank, an operation that eventually uncovered Montesinos' location, the reports said.

Guevara, for his part, applied for the bounty for leading the FBI and Peruvian authorities to Montesinos. After his own arrest, Guevara agreed to reveal his boss' whereabouts in exchange for immunity from prosecution.

Laufer, meanwhile, says it was his sleuth work, published in a Caracas newspaper, that originally tipped off authorities to Montesinos' presence in Venezuela.

The private investigator turned up evidence that Montesinos had entered Venezuela under an assumed identity. He also tracked down two mug shot photos of a bearded Montesinos taken at a Caracas plastic surgery clinic.

Laufer said he started looking for Montesinos before the reward was announced. The search began "from the moment I had signs that the most wanted man in the hemisphere had clandestinely entered Venezuela," he said.

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