TV star claims love wasn't based on cash

LIMA, Peru — In a courtroom drama that would not have been out of place on her Jerry Springer-like television show "Laura," high-octane host Laura Bozzo admitted in court testimony Friday that she was hopelessly in love with Peru's imprisoned former spy chief Vladimiro Montesinos.

But she denied charges that she took bribes from Montesinos to support ex-President Alberto Fujimori's fraud-filled re-election campaign on her TV show, which later became a hit in Latin America and is now seen in millions of U.S. homes on Spanish-language television.

"I would go and see Mr. Montesinos because I was absolutely in love with Mr. Montesinos. I was absolutely obsessed with Mr. Montesinos," Bozzo, 53, told the court, waving her arms dramatically.

"I've been detained three years unjustly. I never received one cent," said Bozzo, who has been under house arrest since 2002. She faces up to seven years in prison and a maximum fine of about $6 million, if convicted.

Montesinos sat in a corner of the special courtroom in the maximum-security naval-base prison where he has been held since his capture in Venezuela in June 2001.

His face appeared impassive, but he continually gulped as Bozzo described her obsessive love for him.

"The only program I ever did for Dr. Vladimiro Montesinos was when I dressed up as Elvis Presley ... with an electric guitar. I sang his favorite song," she said, without specifying the ballad.

"I can imagine how you will laugh at me," she told the tribunal, "because the truth is, yes, I was in love. He absolutely never gave me the time of day."

The NBC Telemundo networks transmit Bozzo's Spanish-language show five days a week to 8 million U.S. viewers and millions more in some 16 Latin American countries — though not Peru, where it was canceled following her house arrest.

Bozzo produces the program, now in its fifth season, from a Lima studio equipped with luxury living quarters that she shares with her boyfriend, Cristian Zuarez, 29, an Argentine singer-songwriter.

Fond of boasting about having had a face-lift, tummy tuck and breast implants, Bozzo fancies herself a latter-day Eva Peron, the populist former Argentine first lady whose likeness adorns Bozzo's studio offices, outnumbered only by glossy photos of herself.

The state's star witness, former Montesinos confidante Matilde Pinchi Pinchi, testified Friday that, on Montesinos' orders, she prepared five envelopes with $10,000 each to give to Bozzo.

Pinchi Pinchi said she never actually handed the cash to the TV star, but that on one occasion she gave one of the envelopes to Montesinos to give to Bozzo in an adjoining office in the spy chief's headquarters.

Montesinos later told her he had given Bozzo a total of $3 million, Pinchi Pinchi testified.

She said Bozzo visited the intelligence-service headquarters several times, "in the afternoons after her show, and evenings. Sometimes she even stayed to sleep overnight."

Montesinos, 59, has already been convicted and sentenced to 15 years in prison on various charges, including paying millions to Peruvian TV executives, including Bozzo's former bosses. He refused to talk when he was called to testify about Bozzo last month.

He is also being tried for allegedly dealing arms to Colombian guerrillas and faces pending charges for alleged drug trafficking and directing a paramilitary death squad.

Fujimori fled in November 2000 to Japan, where he now lives in exile, fighting extradition back to Peru.