Pandora’s Papers: Chile’s Attorney General’s Office opens investigation against President Sebastian Pinera over ‘Pandora’s Papers’ | pandora leaves

Sebastian Pinera will face the courts of his country. On Friday, the Chilean Attorney General’s Office announced the official opening of an investigation against the president after pandora leaves Confirm the alleged infractions in 2010 sale in the British Virgin Islands of its shares in a giant mining project. Chilean law does not provide any kind of immunity to the president, who can be investigated and even arrested while in office.

The National Prosecutor, Jorge Abbott, had instructed the Anti-Corruption Unit to study the documents issued by International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, for its English acronym), which was responsible for media in its Chilean chapter Labot And Cyprus. The leak confirmed that in 2010 Pinera sold to businessman and friend Carlos Delano his participation in Dominga mining project for $152 million. Payment of the third installment of the deal was subject to the government, in the hands of Piñera, and did not declare the Dominga region a nature reserve. As the Environmental Protection Declaration did not arrive, the fees were paid at the end of 2011 as specified between the two parties.

Dominga’s sales contract and details of the third batch reached the courts in 2017, following a complaint by former Communist MP Hugo Gutiérrez. Then Pinera was weeks away from starting his second term and was later acquitted, with a ruling upheld by the Supreme Court. The attorney general’s office’s decision this Friday is based on the fact that despite the complaint’s investigation that year, there was access not to the original document written in English and signed in the British Virgin Islands, but to a Spanish-translated version of the prior trade agreement. “We can say that this is indeed a new precedent,” said Marta Herrera, director of anti-corruption at the National Prosecutor’s Office.

Pinera will end his second four-year term with the attorney general’s office investigating him for alleged tax crimes, as well as bribery and bribery. He also faces the threat of a parliamentary sector that has promised to embark on an impeachment process next week that could end in a trial, something unprecedented in Chile since the return of democracy in 1990. Opposition lawmakers plan to move forward with the previous trial. The general election is on November 21, but they have time to disqualify Pinera from any public office for up to six months after he left office in March.

The Chilean political landscape is turbulent due to a combination of factors. To the murky line that separates the president’s business from politics, the country will, within seven weeks, add presidential and parliamentary elections with candidates who do not attract a large majority. According to various polls, the preferred candidate is still Gabriel Borek, a left-wing deputy of the Amplio Front. He is followed by Jose Antonio Caste, a right-wing extremist who bypassed government candidate Sebastian Seychelles. The elections are taking place in parallel with the Constituent Assembly process, the solution that Lamoneda found to neutralize the demands for change that had emerged violently during the October 2019 riots, which are now two years old.

President Pinera has denied any crime related to the Dominga project. hours after posting pandora leaves He called a press conference in La Moneda, seat of government, where he declared the matter doomed, denied any conflict of interest between his private business and his public life, and lamented that because of his position, as he put it: “More harm is in the personal thing rather than the benefits.” . “It seems to me that it is absolutely unacceptable to use information that is already known and has already been ruled by the courts,” he said, referring to the 2017 court case. The attorney general’s office did not agree with that argument and opened a new investigation this Friday. against the president.

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