policies of financial deregulation. Compliance eroded and with it, the real value of pensions which, by 1987, had fallen to 25% of pre-retirement income. A wave of lawsuits against the NPS thus followed, and in 1986, President Raúl Alfonsín ordered an injunction against further liens on NPS accounts. The NPS was officially superseded in 1990 by the INPS, an interim agency during whose tenure a two-tier system was established; three pension funds operated by the NPS, as well as three family assistance funds, were merged. These changes were adopted, with modifications, in the establishment of the ANSES on December 27, 1992, through Decree 2741/91 signed a year earlier by President Carlos Menem. ANSES The first Director of ANSES was Arnaldo Cisilino, who had directed the INPS. Cisilino oversaw the absorption of the INPS into ANSES, completed in 1994, and had an IBM computer system installed in the antiquated agency. Debts stemming from lawsuits filed from 1987 onward were settled in 1993 with government bonds and funds obtained from the privatization of the state oil concern, YPF. Cisilino stepped down in 1995, and was succeeded as director by Alejandro Bramer Markovic. Bramer Markovic, who was also named Director of PAMI (the national public health insurance system for the elderly and disabled), inherited yawning deficits at ANSES, which reached us$2.8 billion in the first half of 1996. These were exacerbated by numerous factors, including the 1995 recession, and a portfolio of up to 300,000 fraudulent pensions estimated to cost ANSES nearly a billion dollars annually. The most pervasive challenge to the 20 billion-dollar agency's finances, however, resulted from the 1994 introduction of private pension funds (AFJP), whose enrollees were barred from returning to the ANSES system. He reduced benefit abuse and had charges filed against Cisilino for the no bid IBM contracts, which later resulted in the latter's indictment for fraud. Bramer Markovic, however, was an outsider to President Menem's political circle, and was replaced in January 1998 by Saúl Bouer, a former Mayor of Buenos Aires. Bouer, like his predecessor, faced an ongoing wave of lawsuits filed by those contesting their pension determination, which averaged us$300 a month. Bouer advocated a greater willingness to settle with plaintiffs, as well as an increase in the us$150 minimum pension. Bouer's proposals were rejected, however, and he resigned in December 1998; he was succeeded by Leopoldo van Cauwlaert. Newly elected President Fernando de la