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How Alfredo Yabrin became one of Argentina's most infamous businessmen, before dying a violent death.
HE STARTED OUT AS AN ICE cream salesman and office boy. Last year he told a congressional antimafia commission he was "a simple postman."
But Alfredo Yabran, found dead in May after apparently shooting himself through the mouth with a shotgun, died a very rich postman indeed. With a private army for protection, a full-time spokesman declaiming his views, and an alleged array of nominees to shield his business interests, Yabran was never just the local-boy-madegood his advisers struggled to portray.
His violent end stunned Argentina. Opinion polls showed widespread scepticism over the official account of his death.
Five days before the body was discovered Yabran went into hiding when a judge ordered his arrest in connection with the January 1997 murder of news photographer Jose Luis Cabezas, who took some of the first published photographs of the reclusive businessman.
Yabran, a first-generation Argentine of humble Syrian stock, was born in Entre Rios province in 1944. At an early age he was selling...