by Rod Hughes

A 34-year-old scandal revolving around a $60,000 donation by foreign businessmen to the National Symphony Orchestra has erupted again after Sunday’s exposé in the nation’s leading daily paper, La Nación. The donation was given to then-President José “Don Pepe” Figueres during his final term in office and raised eyebrows at the time when he became secretive about where the money ended up. The paper estimates that the donation would be worth, in today’s dollars, about $280,000.
When cornered by newsmen in 1973, Figueres said, “‘ I spent it on candy,’ then scuttled away,” reported the weekly Tico Times. But La Nación reported Sunday that Figureres set up the so-called “Association for the National Symphony Orchestra” with himself as president and bought three farms with a part of the money. La Nación estimates that only about a third of the money was spent on the farms, plus a sum to build a road and to plant trees, the rest deposited in the asssociation’s name in a Banco de Costa Rica account.
When Figueres died in 1990, the association presidency passed to one of his daughters, Kirsten Figueres, who remains the head of the private entity. Thus, points out the newspaper, a donation given to the government three decades ago remains control of the Figueres family.
The daughter, in a written answer to the newspaper’s inquiry, maintains that the land never generated a profit and even takes money to maintain. Former Culture Minister Guido Saenz, once vice president of the association, also says he does not believe the farms were ever developed because Don Pepe became ill after the purchase and was unable to develop it, although he told the symphony’s magazine in 1972 that he planned an agricultural campaign to belong to the orchestra. It was for this plan that the donation was made. Saenz himself declares flatly that he never had anything to do with the financial side of the association nor in development of the farms.
An internal audit of the Culture Ministry determined in 1998 that the farms should revert to the government and not be controlled by the Figueres family. Moreover, the present Minister of Culture, Maria Elena Carballo, says that she is willing to go to court to recover the association assets, none of which were ever under control of either the Culture Ministry or the Orchestra.
In 1974, reports the daily, the symphony board was disturbed about the donation and one member proposed that the Comptroller General’s office investigate. Saez, the board’s chairman, opposed this, saying that he had talked with Figueres and that Don Pepe confirmed that two businessmen had donated the money to Figueres for the orchestra and promised a written accounting, which he presented in 1975. But congressmen also called for a Comptroler accounting and Figueres gave another story to the now-defunct daily El Excelsior: “I received no donation for the Symphony Orchestra. I made a presentation to friends for some funds.”
Gabriel Goñi, who was director of the National Symphony Orchestra in 2002, says he urged then-Culture Minister Saenz to transfer the property to the government several times that year until he was threatened with being fired, reported the paper. Goñi says that Saenz finally told him, “Look, stop making problems or you go. I’ll settle this with Kirsten later.”
But Saenz says that isn’t what happened. “That’s an infamy. I fired him for other reasons and nobody likes to get kicked out. Let him say what he wants.”
La Nación maintains that it was Saenz himself who, in 1997, petitioned a judge to transfer the farms to the association headed by Kirsten Figueres.
Perhaps the controversy would pass all but unnoticed if it were not for the figures involved. Don Pepe Figueres, a leader of the victorious National Liberation Army in 1948, one of the founders of the National Liberation Party and thrice chief executive of the country, is given credit for such reforms as abolition of the armed forces, the present constitution and liberalizing the political structure of the country. He was a political icon, a firm spokesman for democracy in a Latin America largely ruled by dictators.
But his final term in office was scandal-ridden, including the orchestra donation. And his name will forever be associated with fugitive financier Robert Vesco, whom he and his successor, Daniel Oduber, protected from prosecutors in the United States and France who demanded his extradition on fraud charges.
If Don Pepe is a political icon, Guido Saenz is a cultural one. He is a Renaissance man, an expert in music, art, an author and the chief mover behind the creation of the Culture Plaza next door to the National Theater when it was feared that some tall building might fill the then-vacant space and ruin the effect of that architectural jewel. He was twice Minister of Culture.
Yet, when approached by a pair of reporters to ask about the affair, the usually mild mannered Saenz turned almost hostile. “You came all this way here to talk about the farms?” he said, “I don’t care a fig (about them), it irritates me,,,It makes me angry.” Asked what made him angry about the subject he returned, “That you’re talking about that foolishness.”
Under the probing questions of the La Nación reporters, he admitted that he had been lax in not paying attention to the farms when he was Minister of Culture. Asked who was responsible that the donation did not pass into the hands of the government, he said, “In part, I was, without a doubt, I’m not going to pass the buck to anyone else…” Repeatedly he said, “Ask Kirsten. Ask Kirsten.” Asked who the donation benefited, he answered “What? It wasn’t good for absolutely anything.”