Carla Del Ponte

Carla Del Ponte (born February 9, 1947) is a former Chief Prosecutor of two United Nations international criminal law tribunals. A former Swiss attorney general, she was appointed prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in August 1999, replacing Louise Arbour.

In 2003, the U.N. Security Council removed Del Ponte as the Prosecutor for the ICTR, and replaced her there with Hassan Bubacar Jallow following pressure from Rwanda's president Kagame who was obstructing her efforts to investigate crimes by Tutsi. She remained the Prosecutor for the ICTY until 1 January 2008, when she was succeeded by Serge Brammertz. Del Ponte was formerly married, and has one son.

Del Ponte served as Swiss ambassador to Argentina from 2008 to February 2011.

Early life and education

Del Ponte was born in Bignasco, Switzerland, in 1947. Her first language is Italian and she speaks fluent German, French and English. Del Ponte studied law in Bern and Geneva, as well as in the United Kingdom. She obtained her LL.M. in 1972.

After completing her studies, Del Ponte joined a private law firm in Lugano, leaving in 1975 to set up her own practice.

Career

Prosecutor in Switzerland

In 1981, Del Ponte was appointed an investigating magistrate, and later public prosecutor at the Lugano district attorney's office. As public prosecutor, she dealt with cases of money laundering, fraud, drug trafficking, arms smuggling, terrorism and espionage, often looking into the many international links forged in Switzerland's role as a global business centre.

During her time in office, Del Ponte became well known in Europe for breaking a Sicilian Mafia money-laundering operation in Switzerland, pursuing former Soviet bloc officials who may have been stowing illegal funds in Switzerland and investigating Swiss bankers suspected of misappropriating money, in some cases in collaboration with Latin Americans. She also produced the evidence for Pakistan to bring money-laundering charges against Benazir Bhutto, a former Prime Minister, and her husband, Asif Ali Zardari.

It was during that period that she and Investigative Judge Giovanni Falcone uncovered the link between Swiss money launderers and the Italian drug trade in the so-called "pizza connection." Judge Falcone was killed by a large Mafia bomb. Del Ponte was more fortunate as the half a tonne of explosives planted in the foundations of her Palermo home were discovered in time for her to escape the attempted assassination unhurt. Falcone's death nurtured Del Ponte's resolve to fight organised crime. Her enemies in the Cosa Nostra call her "La Puttana" ("the whore"). She therefore became the first public figure in Switzerland to require round-the-clock protection and armour-plated car.

In the late 1990s, Del Ponte and Yuri Skuratov with Filipe Turover providing evidence investigated Russian corruption involving high ranking Russian officials. Earlier, both Italian and German Tax officials had started investigations. In early 2000, Filipe Turover sent messages from his residence in Switzerland to Moscow prosecutors "I'm ready to talk about Putin. Always your Turover." (russian: "Готов говорить о Путине. Всегда ваш Туровер.") Although the initial investigations were headed by Skuratov and Georgy Timofeyevich Chuglazov (russian: Георгий Тимофеевич Чуглазов), Chuglazov was promoted to adviser to the Prosecutor General of Russia by Vladimir Ustinov, who replaced Skuratov as Prosecutor General of Russia after Boris Yeltsin fired Skuratov on 2 April 1999; Chuglazov was taken of the case just days before he was to travel to Switzerland in August to depose witnesses and to receive bank and other documents. The Russian prosecutor Ruslan Tamaev headed the Russian investigations which ended when his half brothers Hasan and Hussein were charged with illegal possession of drugs and weapons and he was subsequently removed from investigations. A few months later the charges against his half brothers were dropped. Vladimir Putin appointed Pavel Borodin to the diplomatic post of Secretary of the State of the Russia—Belarus Union (russian: госсекретаря союзного государства Россия--Белоруссия) which gave Borodin diplomatic immunity from prosecution and ended further investigations into Borodin's criminal activities.

In 1999, Del Ponte suffered a setback when Switzerland's highest court overturned the confiscation by her office of $90 million from Swiss accounts belonging to Raúl Salinas de Gortari, the brother of a former President of Mexico. The court ruled that Del Ponte had no authority to seize the $90 million only on the suspicion that it included money from drug-trafficking. But the ruling did not absolve Salinas of the charges.

Career at the ICTY

After serving for five years as Switzerland's attorney general, in 1999 Del Ponte joined the ICTY and ICTR to deal with war crimes as prosecutor. Del Ponte was the first experienced prosecutor to hold the job on the war crimes tribunals; her predecessors, Louise Arbour and Richard Goldstone, were both judges. At the time, Switzerland was not a member of the United Nations, which was considered an advantage for Del Ponte.

In an interview in late 2001 about war crimes committed during the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s, Del Ponte said: "Justice for the victims and the survivors requires a comprehensive effort at international and national level."

As reported by Reuters on March 18, 2003, according to Del Ponte, Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Đinđić had predicted his own assassination on February 17, just weeks before it happened on March 12, 2003.

In August 2003, after being on the Rwandan genocide case for four years, Del Ponte was removed from the appointment for political reasons and replaced by Hassan Bubacar Jallow.

In an interview in Intellectum website in 2004 she boldly stated that she would like to try in ICTY Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein.

In 2005, she accused the Vatican of helping Croatia's most wanted war crimes suspect Ante Gotovina evade capture. He has since been acquitted of all charges by ICTY. The Croatian Bishops' Conference, which heads the Croatian Roman Catholic Church, dismissed Del Ponte's allegations. Its spokesman Antun Suljic said the conference "has no knowledge or indications of the whereabouts" of General Gotovina.

On January 30, 2007 Del Ponte announced her intention to resign as Chief Prosecutor at the ICTY at the end of the year, stating it was "time to return to normal life." She was succeeded by Serge Brammertz on January 1, 2008.

Career as Swiss diplomat

Del Ponte served as Switzerland's Ambassador to Argentina from January 2008 until early 2011, when she retired.

Post-retirement

From September 2012 to August 2017, Del Ponte was a member of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic, under the auspices of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

In May 2013 she accused the Syrian rebels of using chemical weapons, a view diametrically opposed by the majority of Western government officials. She stated, "We still have to deepen our investigation, verify and confirm (the findings) through new witness testimony, but according to what we have established so far, it is at the moment opponents of the regime who are using sarin

HOME


Content is Copyleft
Website design, code, and AI is Copyrighted (c) 2014-2017 by Stephen Payne


Consider donating to Wikimedia



As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases