A cell phone in which there was conversations with judges, former ministers, prosecutors, politicians from various parties and even figures from the Chilean showbiz It has become a real Pandora’s box that has opened a scandal, different every week, since November of last year.
According to the criteria of
It all happened when an audio was uncovered in which the renowned lawyer Luis Hermosilla You hear people talking about bribes to the country’s Internal Revenue Service to speed up a businessman’s paperwork. That would be the tip of an iceberg that has been collapsing over the last 10 months and splashing in its path figures of the national elite.
The call “Audios Case” Hermosilla has been kept in preventive detention since August 27, accused of bribery and money laundering. He was the most prestigious lawyer in Chile, with a career spanning more than 40 years and with clients ranging from businessmen to priests, politicians, and even the chief advisor of Miguel Crispithen chief advisor to the president Gabriel Boricwho dispensed with his services last year when the scandal broke.
The morbid details of the case make for a very good television series. From Hermosilla, a small and not very attractive man, with a great inclination for partying, luxury and women
“They have just sent to prison, in preventive detention, a man who believed himself to be all-powerful, Mr. Hermosilla. There cannot be first and second class citizens and justice and the law must be equal for everyone. Therefore, it is good that those who believed themselves to be powerful are also going to prison,” said President Boric in the midst of the controversy that has dominated the media agenda in Chile in recent months.
At the beginning of September the defense of the powerful lawyer, his brother Juan Pablo Hermosillaasked that the 770,000 chat pages that were in the hands of the Prosecutor’s Office, to prevent them from continuing to leak through the media, drop by drop, and to show that his brother’s tentacles extended much further than what had been shown until now and that, if he had fallen, he would take with him all the powerful people who had surrounded him for decades, and had sponsored or benefited from his alleged irregular actions to obtain information.
Among these powerful people have appeared names of former ministers of the administration of the late former president Sebastián Piñera such as Andres Chadwick and Felipe Wardwhose ties to Hermosilla are still under investigation.
However, the most direct impact of the powerful jurist’s corruption network is in the judiciary and the Investigative Police (PDI) where the audios have already cost the jobs of figures such as the former director of the PDI, Sergio Munozand the Supreme Court judge Angela Vivanco.
The first for violation of secrecy, for filter confidential informationin various highly relevant cases, and the second because she would have asked Hermosilla for help to be ratified as a Supreme Court judge and, once in office, she would have repaid the favor by trying to veto the appointment of judges, supporting the promotions of others and sharing information with him. legal cases.
The TV series ‘Don Satan’
In the most recent Cadem survey, this case was asked and 84% of respondents think that the behavior of Luis Hermosilla This is not an isolated incident, but rather a practice that lawyers often repeat. The same percentage believes that there is a lot of corruption in the southern country. A figure 15% higher than that recorded almost a decade ago, which was the last time this subject was asked in this survey.
The most important people in the country’s economic and political elite were on that cell phone, which is why it has such a big impact, because it takes the blinders off society’s eyes.
“Chile is not a country that is used to seeing presidents or politicians imprisoned for corruptionThere were suspicions before, but this is the first time we see the smoking gun wielded by someone well known. Hermosilla was a partner and friend of the Minister of the Interior. (in the government of Sebastián Piñera). He had an office in the government palace, he was close to the president. And he operated left and right. Also. We are in election years, and everything looked very good for the center-right, especially because of the discontent with the government’s management. But this scandal could cost him a tremendous citizen punishment,” he said. THE TIME the former president of the Council for Transparency Francisco Leturia.
However, for Leturia the so-called “Audios Case” It is not comparable with other cases of corruption that have shaken Latin American countries such as the 8,000 process, in Colombiaor the Vladivideos of Vladimirios Montesinos, in Peru.
Although its media potential lies in the characters involved and in the fact that it reveals how power operates in the highest spheres. “The morbid details of the case make for a very good television series. From Hermosilla, a small and not very attractive man, with a great inclination for partying, luxury and women, called “The Lord of the Halls” or “Don Satan”, to his audios where he offers bribes to Ukrainians, Russians, drugs, or brags about burning offices where there are public records. And I could go on: romance, intimate videos, betrayals, businesses where the Palestinian and Jewish communities collide. It is the first time that many people believe they are seeing, really, how they always suspected power operates,” says Leturia.
According to experts, there is a deep-rooted cultural perception in Chile that it is a country different from the rest of the region, which has led to this corruption scandal reaching a very high level of notoriety and media coverage.
“In Chile, corruption is not transversal. We find cases of corruption in which moves a lot of money and that they are cases of the elite. Here you do not find the day-to-day corruption that is seen in other Latin American countriessuch as bribes to police or to carry out procedures. Rather, it is corruption aimed at the highest spheres,” he says. Julieta Suarez-Caoprofessor of Political Science at the Pontifical Catholic University (PUC).
An opinion shared by the academic of the Network of Political Scientists, Umut Aydinwho Expert in corruption issues“Chile, in the region and in the world, is known as a relatively honest country, a country with little corruption, but every so often a scandal of this type arises that shakes the political world, shakes the private world. So this case shows us that Chile is a country where there is some corruption and where this problem has not been eradicated.”
Experts agree that the “Audios Case”and the findings that continue to be published from the chats found in the Hermosilla cell phonecan have a very strong impact on a citizenry that has not seen the demands that took them to the streets resolved, 5 years ago, in which it became evident that inequality, not only in terms of economic but in access to justice. And where the judiciary It is presumed to be a corrupt entity, incapable of being the arbiter of society.
“The most important people in the company were on that cell phone. economic elite and the country’s politics, which is why it has such a big impact, because removes the blindfold from society and shows how they work in Chile when people have differentiated access to justice,” he concludes. Suarez-Cao.
Andrea Aguilar Cordoba
For THE TIME
Santiago
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