Chilean justice has opened criminal proceedings against Sebastián Piñera for the Pandora Papers | Investigate the sale of the mining company Dominga

Chilean justice will begin to criminalize the president of this country, Sebastián Piñera, for its alleged link with business done in tax hiding places reported in the Pandora Papers. He is accused of a conflict of interest between your business and a business with the state. The Chilean prosecution has also decided to open a criminal investigation for the sale of the mining company Dominga. In a message to the Nation, Piñera said he did not share the prosecutor’s decision.

The green light for the conservative president to be put under the magnifying glass was allowed by the Seventh Guarantee Court of Santiago, who admitted the complaint filed by the lawyer Luis Rendon, former leader of the Student Federation of the University of Chile and environmental lawyer.

The news rocked the covers of the local press, which had previously echoed suspicions around the president for his alleged participation in the sale of the mining company Dominga via a tax haven in the British Virgin Islands in 2010.

For these days, Piñera was the first magistrate for the first time and, therefore, the negotiation would involve a conflict of interest that Piñera himself has denied time and time again.

What the complaint against Piñera says

Rendón’s complaint accuses him of the crime of “incompatible negotiation” because “The defendant had an objective interest in the business being fully realized, both by the seller and by the buyer”.

“It’s essential that the known facts be fully investigated and it is important that there is a complainant, because the investigations of the prosecution showed that they did not provide the necessary guarantees ”, declared the complainant during the conference.

After the Pandora Papers scandal, Piñera came out to defend himself. He said that in the sale of the mining company “Chilean tax rules were strictly observed”, that the operation was not “consulted” and that in the sale “every tax has been paid”.

However, the investigation revealed that one of the conditions for performing such an operation was that the land where the project was located should not be declared a nature reserve, a decision which in Chile depends on the president himself.

Piñera defended himself by saying that he had turned all his businesses over to “a blind trust”. When assuming the presidency, he assured that he had never been aware of this transaction and insisted that with the creation of the trust he was trying to avoid possible conflicts of interest. interests.

Criminal investigation on the public prosecutor’s office

At the same time, the Public Prosecutor’s Office also opened a criminal investigation against him for the sale of Minera Dominga by a company owned by his sons, an operation that was revealed by the Pandora Papers.

“The National Inspector Jorge Abbott, dated today October 8, has decided to officially open a criminal investigation into the events relating to what has come to be known as the “Pandora Papers” and which are ultimately linked to the sale of the mining company Dominga, it was linked to the family of President Piñera», Reported the anti-corruption chief of the prosecution, Marta Herrera.

“The public prosecutor took this decision considering that at the time the antecedents could cover characters of corruption crime, with its correlate of corruption, and possible tax crimes, issues that will ultimately all be investigated, ”Herrera said.

The bribery sentence carries a five-year prison sentence, Herrera said, adding that given “the seriousness of the learned facts”, the case will be assigned to a regional prosecutor, instead of a local prosecutor. Abbott appointed Claudia Perivancich, from the Valparaíso region.

In a message from Palacio La Moneda, President Piñera rejected the decision of the Attorney General. “We do not share the decision announced today by the prosecution to open an investigation into a cause already known and judged.”

The opposition promotes a political trial against Piñera

The bench of deputies of the opposition has announced that it will present an impeachment request next week against the first president.

Socialist deputy Jaime Naranjo explained that “the reasons and grounds for this accusation will be based on for having violated the principle of probity and for having seriously compromised the honor of the country“.

For his part, the leader of the ruling Independent Democratic Union (UDI), Javier Macaya, rejected the initiative: “It is not a question of looking at the ceiling, but I hope that we can be serious when something very serious is being said like dismissing the President of the Republic. However, he admitted: “The dice are a little thrown”.

The Pandora Papers, released last Sunday by the ICIJ, is a survey conducted by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) that involves more than 330 politicians and government officials from around the world.

In the post revealed last week, three active Latin American presidents are mentioned: Sebastien Piñera, Guillermo Lasso (Ecuador) and Luis Abinader (Dominican Republic). Also for 11 former presidents, ministers and senior officials who have used offshore companies in tax havens to hide their wealth and evade taxes.