PRESS RELEASE
LaRouche: ‘Bank of the South’ Delay Is the Work Of the South American Friends of the Scandal-Ridden BAE
July 5, 2007 (EIRNS)--This release was issued by the Lyndon LaRouche Political Action Committee (LPAC).
The intended late June signing of the founding document of the new Bank of the South by the Presidents of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, Paraguay and Venezuela, has been postponed to an unspecified date later this year. Although the announced reason for the delay are disagreements over issues such as capital contributions and voting rights of the members, and the location of the new bank's headquarters, U.S. statesman Lyndon LaRouche today pointed to the fundamental issue at stake:
"The Bank of the South is a matter of life and death for the nations of South America, as the international financial and monetary system plunges rapidly into disintegration. As I noted in a June 29 interview on Ecuadorean radio: 'It is my hope that the Bank of the South, would function as a vehicle commonly used by sovereign nation-states of South America, to maintain sovereignty, number one; but as a necessary vehicle of the type I specified back in August of 1982. It is the exchange of long-term credit among nations, for projects in common interest. You need a system of fixed-exchange-rate agreements among nations, in order to do that.'
"The founding of the Bank of the South poses a problem in South America for financial interests typified by the Spanish Santander and BBVA banks, which are extensions of the British Empire's scandal-ridden BAE company," LaRouche said.
As LaRouche and his associates have extensively documented, the BAE is at the center of "The Scandal of the Century," having generated a slush fund in the range of $100 billion through its "Al Yamamah" deal with Dick Cheney's friend, Saudi Prince Bandar, which has been used for black operations, destabilizations and coups around the world. Chilean fascist dictator Augusto Pinochet, for example, was an integral part of the BAE's weapons-and-murder apparatus in South America. The BAE has functioned for decades as an instrument of the British Empire, as such.
Santander Bank is intimately associated with the Royal Bank of Scotland, one of the Queen's leading personal financial institutions, and has developed widespread financial and political influence across South America. For example, high-level "former" Santander officials have managed to insinuate themselves into prominent positions, including cabinet posts, within Brazil's Lula government, and are known to be violently hostile to the idea of the Bank of the South, and President Lula's stated commitment to the new financial institution.
