Pandora Papers: Sebastián Piñera was accused of using an offshore account for the sale of the Chilean Dominga mine | What the government of Chile said

The President of Chile, Sebastien Piñera, was accused this Sunday by the investigators who produced the Pandora Papers of use an offshore account in the British Virgin Islands for the sale of Minera Dominga, an operation that involved businessman Carlos Alberto Délano, one of his best friends. After the repercussions of the events, the government issued a statement releasing the president from his responsibilities.

“The president never participated or had any information regarding the sale of Minera Dominga, an operation that took place in 2010, when the president no longer had any participation in the administration of these companies,” the statement said.

According to Francisca Skoknic (LaBot) and Alberto Arellano (CIPER), in charge of the Chilean section of the Pandora Papers, an investigation conducted by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), “originally the Piñera Morel family was the largest shareholder of the Dominga project “and” together with Carlos Alberto Délano represented more than 56% of the property, until December 2010, the latter bought the participation of all the other partners for 152 million dollars “.

“Part of the transaction was carried out in the British Virgin Islands, where a contract was signed establishing payment in three installments. The latter depended on the absence of regulatory changes that would hamper the installation of the mine and its port. The detail is that these changes depended on the decisions of the government of Sebastián Piñera. Investors, including the presidential family, would have obtained a profit of 1000% in 18 months ”, assured Chilean journalists.

In March 2010, Piñera assumed the presidency of the Republic during his first term “and a few months later, in August, he dealt an unexpected blow: after a wave of protests from environmentalists, he announced the cancellation of the construction of the Barrancones thermoelectric power station. , of the Franco-Belgian Suez, despite the operating authorizations ”, underlined the Chilean researchers.

“I agreed with Suez to change the location of the Barrancones thermoelectric power station, so as to move it away from the area of ​​Punta Choros, Isla Damas and Isla Gaviota and to protect this nature sanctuary,” Piñera told the time. . Barrancones sought to settle in the municipality of La Higuera, like Dominga, but at that time no one knew that Piñera had economic interests in the area.

Piñera’s response

This Sunday, after the revelation of the Pandora Papers, the government decided to issue a statement to release the president from the charges, where he assured that “the facts mentioned (in the ICIJ investigation) regarding the sale of Minera Dominga they have already been the subject of an in-depth investigation by the public prosecutor and the courts of law in 2017 and the prosecutor’s office recommended that the case be closed due to the non-existence of a crime, to comply with the law and the lack of participation of President Sebastián Piñera in the aforementioned operation. ”

This decision, recalls the brief, “was accepted by the court of first instance and unanimously ratified by the court of appeal and the Supreme Court of Justice”.

In the statement, the government assured that “The president never participated or had any information regarding the sale of Minera Dominga” and he also claimed that Piñera also did not “participate in the administration of a company for more than 12 years, before assuming his first presidency”.

“Neither President Piñera nor his family have investment companies incorporated abroad”, he said.

In the latest, the government said, “companies domiciled in Chile belonging to the Piñera family were shareholders of companies incorporated abroad” corn “the existence and its participation was informed from the outset to the regulatory authorities competent, fully complying with the law and paying each of the taxes that were owed to Chile for such investments. ”

Finally, the press team of the Head of State recalled that “since March 2018”, by the law on probity in the public service and the prevention of conflicts of interest, the “financial assets of the president are managed in blind trusts, which implies that the president does not know the investments made. The same goes for their relatives, “despite the fact that (in this case) the law does not require it”.