Piñera’s defense calls impeachment trial of “maneuver for electoral purposes”

The defense of the Chilean president, the rightist Sebastian Piñera, described this Friday as a “crafty political maneuver and with clear electoral purposes” the impeachment that is trying to be carried out against him as a result of the Pandora Papers scandal.

“It is not possible to warn from any point of view an activity neither illegal, illicit nor the configuration of constitutional crimes of such gravity that they suppose the possibility of dismissing a President of the Republic in office,” said his defense attorney, Jorge Gálvez, before the commission of five deputies that evaluates the constitutional accusation.

“In our opinion, there are situations that are being forced, generating some confusion on the factual level (…) We are witnessing an accusation that, beyond an intelligent use of language and a series of resources to manipulate the reality of the facts , does not establish any constitutive act of constitutional illicit “, Galvez added.

The accusation had its genesis in the alleged irregularities in the sale of Minera Dominga by a company owned by Piñera’s children in the British Virgin Islands, just nine months after he assumed office for his first term (2010-2014).

As revealed by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), the sale of the project to the businessman and friend of the presidential family Carlos Alberto Délano had to take place in three installments, but the last one was conditional on the area not being declared of environmental protection, a decision that depended on Piñera.

The president, one of the great fortunes of Chile, has defended that he dissociated himself from his businesses through blind trusts in 2009 and that what was revealed in the Pandora Papers was already investigated and dismissed in 2017.

The political trial runs parallel to a criminal investigation promoted by the Public Ministry that seeks to clarify possible tax crimes and bribery in the same financial operation.

The commission in charge of studying the accusation has six days to issue a resolution once Galvez’s appearance is over, which will continue tomorrow, Saturday.

The final report is not binding on whether or not the accusation proceeds, with the plenary session of the Chamber of Deputies being the body that will foreseeably vote next week or at the beginning of the next.

For the mechanism to prosper, an absolute majority is required in the lower house, controlled by the opposition. If achieved, the process will go to the Senate, which acts as a judge and where two-thirds of the votes are needed to remove the president.

The debate takes place in the middle of the presidential race that celebrates its first round on November 21, the date for which the accusatory libel is expected to be in the hands of the Senate.

This is the second attempt to prosecute Piñera politically, after the failed attempt in November 2019 for human rights violations amid massive protests against inequality, the most serious since the end of the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship (1973- 1990). EFE