How Miguel lost his treasure

Press, 23 September 1983, Page 18

How Miguel lost his treasure

From

GEOFFREY MATTHEWS

in Bogota

Miguel Angel Pineda, old Colombian schoolboy living in a small provincial town, had always wanted a Monopoly set so that he and his friends could play at being big city property tycoons with the Bogota equivalents of Trafalgar Square, Mayfair, and the Old Kent Road.

The other day he reckoned he could finally afford it and went out to buy a Monopoly set. In fact, it turned out that Miguel had enough money to go directly to jail, stay there while suffering every other penalty dreamed up by the game’s creators, and still come out a winner.

For Miguel could have bought out the bank any time — and not with the game’s phoney Colombian peso bills but with bona fide large denomination dollar bills. It was

while trying to change a ?50 greenback for pesos so that he could buy a Monopoly set that suspicions were aroused, and the police called. In response to their questions, Miguel led them to a secret hidaway and showed them a huge collection of dollar bills — ?2 million to be exact. Just where he found this veritable treasure trove in the small, tightly-knit community of Anserma in the Caldas department, neither he nor anyone else is saying. Miguel did not go directly to jail after taking the police to his hideaway. Indeed, the police are

satisfied he had no idea of the value of what he had found. “Children around here don’t know foreign money from Monopoly money,” says one friend of the family. “Miguel is a good boy from a good family.” Miguel and his two sisters live on a small estate where their mother works as housekeeper for the owner. The owner too, say locals, is a totally honest man and the crops on his land have never included marijuana. Not many doubt that those $2 million are dineros calientes (hot money) as the proceeds from the Colombian drug racket are known.

For the coffee-rich Caldas department is also one of the main centres of marijuana cultivation. According to another version, the money was ransom paid out by the family of a kidnapped drug racketeer. With the police hot on his tail, the kidnapper handed over the money packed in large suitcases to Miguel for safe-keeping. Many in Anserma know the identity of the person whose illgotten fortune one way or another came into Miguel’s possession, but as one local puts it: “In a small place like this, you don’t mention names if you have any sense.”

That probably explains why the $2 million disappeared again. Aware of the power of the dreaded drug Mafiosas, the local police apparently regarded the treasure trove as too hot to handle and did

not confiscate it. A few days later the money was claimed by “its rightful owner,” say locals, several of whom, like the police, saw the stacks of dollar notes in Miguel’s hideaway. City police have now been called in to investigate, and Miguel’s tearful mother says: “We’ll tell him everthing because we have nothing to hide. We are humble but honourable people.” To some, Miguel is a bit like the man who wins the lottery and then fails to claim his winnings. Says Venancio Correa, who runs a local bar: “Imagine, if he had kept quiet he could have lived like a millionaire for the rest of his life. It seems God gives bread to those who have no teeth.”

Copyright — London Observer Service.