The Lucrative Bounty of Dictatorship

A Senate report finds that Augusto Pinochet siphoned almost $15 million into various United States bank accounts. Obviously, this money should be disgorged and presented to the Chilean treasury.

Pinochet's kitty pales in comparison to that of Fidel Castro, whose estimated net worth is just over half a billion dollars ($550 million). According to Forbes:

Cuba's socialist dictator-for-life derives his fortune from a web of state-owned businesses. Among his profit-generating operations: El Palacio de Convenciones, a convention center near Havana; retail conglomerate CIMEX; and Medicuba, which sells vaccines and other pharmaceuticals produced in Cuba. Castro has ruled the impoverished nation of 11 million since his revolutionary army ousted Fulgencio Batista in 1959. Travels exclusively in a convoy of black Mercedes-Benzes. Sold state-owned Havana Club rum to French liquor giant Pernod Ricard for $50 million in 1993. At age 78, Castro continues to rage against the U.S. Last year he banned the use of American dollars as currency in Cuba and imposed a 10% exchange fee for tourists.

This is nothing new: socialism pays very well for those in charge. As the Soviet people once faced routine shortages of essential consumer goods, party leaders were chauffered in their zils around Moscow and vacationed in their dachas. In America, the vain excesses of dictators are bandied about in the headlines and the gossip pages, but similar conduct by those who cloak themselves in the banners of "the people" and "the people's revolution" are widely overlooked. Perhaps it all comes down to good marketing, which is another supremely rich irony.