Pandora Papers in Chile: Prosecutor’s Office opens a criminal investigation against Sebastián Piñera

This Friday, the Prosecutor’s Office of Chile opened a criminal investigation against the president Sebastian Piñera for the sale of Minera Dominga by a company owned by his sons, an operation for which he appeared in the Pandora Papers.

“The national prosecutor [Jorge Abbott], dated today, October 8, has decided to open ex officio, initiate ex officio, a criminal investigation for the events associated with what has become known as the ‘Pandora Papers’ and that ultimately are related to the sale of the Dominga mining company, which was linked to the family of President Piñera”Marta Herrera, the anti-corruption chief of the Prosecutor’s Office, told the press.

Piñera, one of the rulers who appears in the Pandora Papers investigation, rejected on Monday that he had a conflict of interest in the sale of the miner in 2010 (during his first term) to one of his closest friends.

But Herrera indicated that “The national prosecutor has made this decision considering that at the time the antecedents could have characters of bribery crime, with its correlate of bribery, [y] eventual tax crimes, matters that will ultimately all be the subject of an investigation”.

He added that given “the seriousness of the facts investigated”, The case will be handled by a regional prosecutor, Claudia Perivancich, from the Valparaíso region.

The penalty for bribery is five years in prison, Herrera said.

According to an investigation by local media CIPER and LaBot, part of the Pandora Papers of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), Minera Dominga was sold to businessman Carlos Alberto Délano, Piñera’s friend, for $ 152 million, in a business conducted in the British Virgin Islands.

The investigation adds that the payment of the operation had to be made in three installments, and contained a controversial clause that made the last payment subject to “that an environmental protection area should not be established over the mining area of ​​operations, as claimed by environmental groups”.

The Piñera government, according to the investigation, ended up not protecting the area in which the mine was planned to be, so the third payment was made.