…when the law you break has no moral basis.
In 1991, a crime was committed in New York. The UN imposed an arms embargo on all of the former Yugoslavia and all the national governments who voted for that resolution were parties to that crime.
At the same time as this crime against the peoples of Croatia and Bosnia i Herzegovina was happening, Argentine Economics Minister Domingo Cavallo was conspiring successfully to sell Argentine weapons to Croatia via a series of dummy companies and third parties.
Now I am under no illusions that Mr. Cavallo was motivated by any desire to right the wrong done by the UN when it tried to prevent the poorly armed Croatian and Bosnian peoples under attack by the Yugoslav Army from defending themselves. Nevertheless, that was exactly what the results of his self-serving actions were. We were able to fight and survive and eventually prevail.
Yesterday Domingo Cavallo was arrested under the orders of politically motivated judges for his part in that entirely moral series of arms sales between 1991 and 1995. Argentine congressional deputy Elisa Carrio, an independent anti-corruption campaigner, welcomed the ruling that resulted in Cavallo’s arrest yesterday saying “Truth and justice will prevail”. Guess what, Elisa… it already has and you would not know what either looked like if they bit you in the behind.
And so, Domingo, whatever else you may have done and deserve to be punished for, I hope you beat the rap on this one because there was no moral reason for you not to have done it and several excellent reasons to do so. And given the state of the Argentine economy, I hope you stashed your end of the proceeds in Zürich, not Buenos Aires.
