That’s something like 1/10th of 1/1000th of 1/nth of 1% of what the kleptocrats grab. And yes, every single dime can be explained as acts of state by Pinochet’s regime or dirty tricks by CIA or FBI.

And with Deep Fakes these days, even video of Pinochet personally signing the account paperwork should be summarily dismissed.

It’s all good, and the US Government has among the poorest moral standings in the world for condemning such activity anyway, though it’s far more hypocritical, and I don’t complain about them either. Foreign policy doesn’t take care of itself.
Wheels have to get greased, cogs added or removed.

And if he was stealing it for himself, well, still not enough to do any harm to an economy like Chile’s, and not really that much to support an exile. We’re not talking Mobutu territory here. That guy stole so much from a much weaker [albeit resourced] economy that he practically destroyed Congo’s prospects by himself. And, as ever, we must consider practicalities. A man has to live. And probably pay a private security force in his exile.

Other side of the coin, if he was…? Frankly, I’d have opened up some external accounts myself, in his shoes, and they wouldn’t necessarily have been for my own benefit, either. One never knows when you’re going to have to fund a government-in-exile, or bribe some American Senator not to declare legislative jihad on your government and country.

You really can’t tell what the deal was, with those accounts, if they were even real. The CIA and FBI do enough “funny stuff” with the banking system that I’d want to see video of Pinochet coming in and opening the account, his signatures on the paperwork, thumbprints, and DNA verification for corroboration. And, even then, we don’t know motivation. If he used that money for his own benefit, sure… If not, then how do you know?

Both had been quite radical, terror supporting Committee of Public Safety men, but at last they split on the lines of vaguely normal human [Danton] and moral purist fanatic [Robespierre]. At one point Danton [Klaus Maria Brandauer] waves his hand and asks Rob, “You mean in all this, you’ve taken nothing for yourself?”

Corruption strikes me as a complicated moral issue. A former boss who had some familiarity with life in West Africa [corruption pervasive and wildly out of control] and China [ditto but brutally if selectively punished, so there's a high price], stressed just how much damage pervasive corruption can do. So once it exists, it can get out of control and become social problem # 1 on a state destroying scale.

On the other hand, it can and has generated furious and damaging overreaction when at a smaller scale, or served as an excuse for other repressions.

So I’m left wondering what should be tolerated and when the alarms should go off. In particular, I am troubled by progressives redefining things as corruption as part of their drive to remove all the flexibility of politics and business, and I am not equipped to say where the line should be.

Up here, our PM was embroiled in scandal because a Canadian company allegedly paid bribes overseas, and his office then asked the Justice Department if it might not consider the lesser option of a fine rather than prosecution.

Now I’m actually OK with my nationals’ bribing overseas at their own risk, and probably would not have legislated against it. [I understand the US has longstanding laws also.] But more to the point, I’m also OK with the idea that in such matters the chief executive might ask the executive officer in charge of prosecution to be lenient for reasons of state, indeed openly, certainly behind the doors of government. Prosecution is an executive function, and where the alleged harm is offshore, I’m OK with political and commercial considerations playing a role.

Diplomacy and politics and statecraft are governed by laws, but they aren’t operations of law so how tightly they should reflect judicial procedure is a question.

All of which to say, I want a high standard on these issues but I’m OK with how the Anglo-Saxon world operated circa 1985.

All of which for me comes back to that Danton scene. How easily the writers painted him as the human one just by having him take stuff for himself, and then comparing him to the fanatic who did not.

So with Pinochet, I guess I’d tell those disillusioned-
1. Nobody’s perfect. Don’t hero worship or mythologize anyone too much, even if they genuinely play the hero’s part in whatever your thing is.
2. If you supported the cause, then judge its leader by its success or failure.
3. If all he did was steal 30 million, that’s chump change considering the wealth of Chile and the length of his tenure. A man in that position has to consider his means and place of eventual exile. There are men out there who have stolen far more than that and have done measurable economic damage in the stealing.

This also applies to things like minor sexual misconduct. I get it with the French, all of whom who knew Mitterrand had a second family concealed it for decades.

I am increasingly on the moral, spiritual and ethical outs with the times.