Arts and Life Week – Women in C.R.
Talk, today, 6:30 p.m.; fashion show, tomorrow, 7 p.m.; poetry recital, Wednesday, 7 p.m.; dance, theater, Thursday, 7 p.m.; concert by Guadalupe Urbina, Chiny, María Pretiz, MAF, Friday, 7 p.m., Spanish Cultural Center.

Little Theatre Group open house
Including a preview of “12 Angry Men,” 7 p.m., Laurence Olivier Theater, Av. 2, Ca. 28, 8355-1623, www.littletheatregroup.org.

Batucada
Mundo Loco presents live Brazilian music by Fabio Avelino and Batuque Congo, Jazz Café, San Pedro, 10 p.m., http://jazzcafecostarica.com.

Jazz jam session
Jazz Café Escazú, 12 a.m., http://jazzcafecostarica.com.

Fugitive financier Robert Vesco, who fled the United States to Costa Rica in 1972 to create an illicit international financial paradise here, may have died in Cuba last November, The New York Times reported Saturday – but nobody except for unidentified “people close to him” seems to know about it.

U.S. and Cuban officials told the New York daily on Friday they were unaware of Vesco's death. However, friends of Vesco – who wouldn't give their names to avoid trouble with the Cuban authorities – said he died of lung cancer on Nov. 23.

Vesco, who alluded U.S. justice most of his life after looting Investors Overseas Services of $224 million and making an illegal contribution to Richard Nixon's 1972 presidential campaign, among other crimes, was welcomed by José “Pepe” Figueres, then-president of Costa Rica, to create his imagined “financial district” here to serve as a refuge for international funds.

Figueres shrugged off criticism saying Costa Rica needed investments and shouldn't question their source. But Ticos repeatedly called for Vesco's ouster.

In 1974, The Tico Times published an exclusive interview with Vesco, which revealed him as articulate, wily, cocky and wryly humorous.

Vesco's former pilot, Al “Ike” Esenhauer, who wrote a book about his adventures with the fugitive called “The Flying Carpetbagger,” told The Tico Times, “I love that guy. He's the perfect bullshit artist – a genius.”

Eventually heading for a new haven in Cuba, the tall, mustached white-collar bandit popped into the news again 10 years ago when he was sentenced to prison in Cuba for a financial scheme.

Some who knew Vesco are skeptical of his death, saying he may have pulled off another wily performance: a vanishing act.

“He could have died,” Arthur Herzog, an author who interviewed the fugitive in Cuba for a biography, told The New York Times. “But Bob has used disguises in the past.”

The U.S. daily, nevertheless, reported that it viewed photographs and videos showing a man resembling Vesco in a coffin, as well as photos of him in a hospital bed, “coughing and clearly in pain,” and others of a small group attending his alleged burial.

Costa Rica's public security minister, Janina del Vecchio, less than a month into her post, called a press conference Friday to fend off allegations that she aided a woman with ties to the Italian mafia.

The daily La Nación ran an article the day before detailing ties between Del Vecchio and Anna Moscarelli, an Italian-born Swiss national who handled money for two men associated with the Cosa Nostra, an Italian mafia organization.

Moscarelli claims she did not know the money was tied to the mafia.

Del Vecchio, while working as the Costa Rican ambassador to Switzerland from 1994 to 1998, recommended Moscarelli to the Costa Rican Tourism Institute as a “prestigious” investor whom she knew personally.

Moscarelli, once in Costa Rica, founded the investment group Grupo Papagayo and took out a $3 million loan from Costa Rica's Catholic church, through the administrator of the Pastoral Services of the Episcopal Conference, according to La Nación.

Moscarelli told La Nación that Del Vecchio sold her a BMW and, after returning from Switzerland, lived in her home and worked for her, facts undisputed by the public security chief.

La Nación also quoted Moscarelli in an interview as saying that she had told Del Vecchio about the investigations into her alleged connections to Cosa Nostra, which Del Vecchio denies.

However, in a statement released Friday morning, Moscarelli recanted, saying Del Vecchio never knew about the allegations or Moscarelli's dealings with the Italians and called the article “inexact and offensive.”

In Friday's press conference, a clearly perturbed Del Vecchio repeatedly denied ever knowing about investigations into Moscarelli either as an ambassador or during their friendship, insisting her relationship with the woman was professional and legitimate.

The public security minister, a former math professor who was elected to the Legislative Assembly in 2006, was tapped to replace Fernando Berrocal after he was forced out over statements he made alleging Costa Rican politicians had ties to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), a Colombian rebel army.

Del Vecchio quickly found herself at odds with the Costa Rican press after declaring on her first day as minister that Costa Rica's crime problem is not as bad as it seems.

Two youths drowned yesterday off Nicaragua's Pacific coast during an evangelical baptism ceremony, an emergency team said.

Three other people undergoing baptism, at San Diego beach in the town of Villa El Carmen in the Managua province, were almost lost but emergency workers managed to rescue them.

The fatal victims, Orlando Miranda, 19, and Laureano Ramos, 15, residents of Managua's La Primavera district, belonged to the evangelical church Novena Iglesia Apostólica de la Fe en Cristo.

Witnesses told Nicaragua's TV channel 8 yesterday that the bodies had still not been found.