Menem, Carlos Saúl
[key], 1930–2021, president of Argentina (1989–99), b.
Anillaco, Argentina, National Univ. of Cordoba (LLD, 1955). A Peronist (see
Juan Domingo Perón), he
served as governor of La Rioja (1973–76, 1983–89). Imprisoned
during the 1976 coup, he was released in 1981. He won the 1989 presidential
elections by appealing to the deep-rooted sentiment for Perón among
the poor and the working class. In office, however, he addressed Argentina's
economic crisis by reducing subsidies for the poor, controlling
hyperinflation, privatizing state-owned companies, and reducing government
regulation of businesses. He also reversed the policies of his predecessor,
Raúl Alfonsín,
pardoning military officers convicted of human-rights violations, and
improved relations with Great Britain and the United States. Menem was
reelected in 1995. By the end of his last term he was increasingly perceived
as too flamboyant and tolerant of official corruption. In 2001, Menem was indicted on charges, later
dismissed, of conspiring to smuggle arms to Croatia and Ecuador during
his presidency. New charges relating to the arms sales were brought in
2007; he was acquitted in 2011, but the acquittal was overturned in
2013, but then annulled five years later. Menem ran for
a third term in 2003, but after winning the first round with 24% of the
vote, he withdrew from the runoff when he appeared likely to lose by a
landslide. He spent most of 2004 in Chile to avoid an Argentine government
corruption investigation into his presidency. First elected as one of La
Rioja's three senators in 2005, he ran for governor of the province in 2007
but lost. In 2012, Menem was
charged with accepting a $10 million bribe from Iran to cover up its
involvement in the bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires
in 1994, but he was acquitted of these charges in 2019. In 2015 he was
convicted of overseeing an embezzlement scheme while he was
president.
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