Death of fugitive Vesco confirmed
Posted on Friday, May 9, 2008
MEXICO CITY — The death of financier Robert Vesco, confirmed by documents and interviews, has closed the books on one of Washington’s longest and most prominent fugitive hunts.
A death certificate filed in Cuba confirms reports in recent days that he died in November. His wife, Lidia Alfonso Llaguer, also confirmed the death to the Spanish news agency EFE.
She said she did not know the whereabouts of the fortune that Vesco is said to have bilked from investors in the United States before fleeing in 1972. “I met him without money,” Alfonso told EFE from Havana.
Vesco was accused of swindling investors out of $ 200 million in the 1970 s, illegally contributing to President Nixon’s 1972 re-election campaign and trying to induce the Carter administration to let Libya buy planes in exchange for bribes to U. S. officials. He also was charged with drug trafficking.
U. S. officials said Thursday that they had not dropped the charges. “We’ve heard the reports of his death, and we’re gathering information on it,” a Justice Department official said.
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