How to Rob a Bank

In the last, desperate days of his government, President Jacobo Arbenz summoned Finance Minister Raul Sierra Franco to the presidential offices and told him: "I must have 2,000,000 quetzales* right away; a friendly government has agreed to sell us fighter planes for cash." Sierra Franco, a dutiful and upright functionary, replied that there was probably only a million in cash available, but offered to get that.

He made out a voucher to the director of the government-run Agrarian Bank, who in turn filled out two checks for 500.000 quetzales each to Alfonso Martinez (boss of the agrarian-reform program) and Colonel Carlos Enrique Diaz (head of the armed forces). They gave the checks back to Sierra Franco, who cashed them for blue 20-quetzal bills and grey 100-quetzal bills. He took the million, stuffed in a big canvas bag, back to Arbenz' office and turned it over to the President, Martinez and Diaz.

Two days later Arbenz got Sierra Franco to produce another 100,000 quetzales "for emergency purposes," but the President fled to Mexican embassy asylum before he could take possession. That was when Sierra Franco found that he had been made the dupe. Hiding the 100,000 quetzales in his home, he too took refuge. Last week, on his phoned instructions, his wife gave the bills back to the treasury.

As for the President's share, his Agriculture Minister, holed up in the Ecuadorean embassy, explained to a friend: "Arbenz gave his Communist pals 10,000 quetzales apiece before he quit, but he did not even tell us he was going to resign." Arbenz probably took most of the loot into the Mexican embassy. Now his problem is to get away with it. Even if he gets a safe-conduct out of the country, the new government, under the rules of asylum, could search his baggage and seize any boodle. But a diplomatic cut of the loot to the right hands might still arrange a transfer of funds and let Inside Operator Arbenz head for the outside happily heeled.

* I.e., $2,000,000. Coffee-rich Guatemala's quetzal is exactly at par with the U.S. dollar.

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