In the Know: ‘Al Capone solution’

MANILA, Philippines—President Aquino mentioned the “Al Capone solution” in connection with the cases of retired generals Carlos Garcia and Jacinto Ligot. In his state visit to Singapore in 2011, Aquino said that prosecutors should make sure Garcia ended up in jail even if it was just for tax evasion.

“I don’t care if it is because of what he plundered or the taxes he did not pay. I actually used the phrase… use the Al Capone solution. The message has to be clear,” the President said in a speech before members of the Filipino community in Singapore.

“Al Capone was a murderer, extortionist, etc., but he was jailed because he evaded paying his taxes. That’s true. That’s in history,” Aquino said.

Following a Senate investigation on the alleged corruption in the Armed Forces of the Philippines, the Bureau of Internal Revenue in March 2011 filed in the Department of Justice tax evasion complaints against Garcia and Ligot, and their wives.

Garcia and Ligot were both former military comptrollers whose unexplained wealth prompted plunder charges against them.

Al Capone was an American mobster who ruled an empire of crime in Chicago during the 1920s. He became a mob boss in 1925 running gambling, prostitution, bootlegging, bribery, narcotics trafficking, robbery and protection rackets.

He expanded his territories by gunning down his rivals. In 1929, Capone seized control of the Chicago mob after the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre in which members of a rival gang were brutally murdered in a garage.

Capone, however, was not jailed for his graver crimes but was sentenced to 11 years in federal prison for tax evasion in 1931. He was also fined $50,000 and charged $7,692 for court costs and $215,000 plus interest on back taxes.

Suffering from a case of syphilis, he was released in 1939. After he left prison, he immediately went to a Baltimore hospital for brain treatment. Capone then settled in Florida where he lived until his death in 1947.—Ana Roa, Inquirer Research

Sources: www.fbi.gov, Inquirer Archives, www.britannica.com