Topic: Vladimiro Montesinos

Vladimiro Lenin Montesinos Torres (born May 20, 1945) was the long-standing head of Peru's intelligence service, Servicio de Inteligencia Nacional (SIN), under President Alberto Fujimori. In 2000, secret videos were televised revealing him bribing an elected congressman to leave the opposition and join the Fujimorist side of Congress; the ensuing scandal caused Montesinos to flee the country, hastening the resignation of Fujimori. Subsequent investigations revealed Montesinos to be at the centre of a vast web of illegal activities, including embezzlement, graft, gunrunning, and drug trafficking, for which he is currently being tried.

Montesinos was a Peruvian politician. Montesinos was born in Arequipa. His parents were fervent communists who named him after Lenin. In 1965, as a military cadet, he studied at the US Army's School of the Americas.

In the early 1970s, during the leftist Military Government of General Juan Velasco, Montesinos became a captain of the army. In 1973, he was appointed aide to the army chief and prime minister, General Edgardo Mercado. In 1976, Montesinos was charged by My. Army Jose Fernandez Salvatteci with spying for the United States because he revealed a list of weapons that Peru bought from the Soviet Union. The investigation was terminated abruptly by General Mercado. After Velasco was deposed in 1975, Montesinos made a two-week visit to the United States, paid for by an American government grant. Upon his return to Lima, he was arrested for not having obtained formal permission for the trip from the government of Peru. During the investigation that followed, top-secret documents were found in his possession that he had photocopied and given to the American CIA.