Männil was on the Simon Wiesenthal Center's list of most wanted Nazi war criminals, accused by them of having participated in the murder of Jews while he worked for the political police in 1941–1942 during the German occupation of Estonia.

In October 1943, he escaped to Finland when the German Security Service began to consider him politically dangerous as a student leader at the university.

[4] Männil was accused by a local police official of illegal trade in gold and valuables brought to Finland by Estonian refugees.

[1][5] The relative ease with which Männil received his work and residence permits raised the suspicions of the local authorities.

[1] Männil was allowed to stay in Stockholm to make preparations for his emigration to Venezuela, and an extension was granted on his residence permit a short while later.

[8] Arnold Carl Orav, Chmn, split from BECO in 1951 to form ACO Group, a company that would eventually control over one-sixth of Venezuela's automotive trade.

At the time of the restoration of Estonian independence (1990–1992), during the governments of Edgar Savisaar and Tiit Vähi,[12] Männil was the president of the Prime Minister's Economy Friends Club.

The club consisted of Estonian businessmen living abroad who gave economic advice and helped to explain Estonia's situation to Western nations.

[12] Near the end of 2002, Männil was forced to temporarily relocate to Costa Rica due to the Venezuelan general strike.

These two interests led to conflicts with local anthropologists, who criticized their relationship with the Guajiro people and their means of building their archaeological collection.

[6] On July 22, 2010, after Harry Männil's death, Costa Rican authorities raided his house in Heredia and seized 108 pieces of pre-Columbian art, including fourteen large stone spheres.

[9][20][21] Estonian writer Olev Remsu has published a biography of Harry Männil titled Elitaarne mees (Tänapäev 2011).

[24] Testimony of how Männil interrogated Jews and communists and allegedly handed victims over to the Nazis to be executed was heard by Sweden's Sandler Commission in the 1940s.

[25] In November 1989, the Simon Wiesenthal Center asked the Estonian SSR's public prosecutor's office for any information regarding Männil, who they suspected of being a Nazi war criminal.

[1] In December 1993, Efraim Zuroff, the director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, mailed a letter of complaint to Lennart Meri, the President of Estonia.

He asked for Harry Männil to be removed from his position on the council of Baltic Institute for Strategic and International Studies.

[30] The state prosecutor, Margus Kurm, said that there are no documents or witnesses to prove Männil had participated in executions, arrests, or repressions.

Several aspects support the view that Männil was unaware of such possibilities:[31] The interrogations in question took place on September 4 and 5, at which time the Wehrmacht had been in Tallinn for only six days.

[22] Martin Arpo, superintendent of Security Police Board disagrees with this view: "But the local KGB couldn't find any more evidence against the Nazi collaborators.

Harry Männil, after temporarily moving to Costa Rica due to the Venezuelan general strike, was denied entry to Costa Rica by the country's immigration director Marco Badilla on February 4, 2003, on the basis of information received from the United States Department of Justice and the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

[10][33][34] On November 7, Badilla rescinded the order, citing the lack of evidence found in the Estonian investigations and Männil's age as the reasons.

[33][34] In relation for Männil being barred from the United States, the US ambassador in Estonia, Aldona Wos, refused to attend the opening of the KUMU art museum in February 2006.

[1] The Belloso are a prominent family of recent Jewish heritage dating back as commercial traders and bankers in Curaçao.