Until September 2005, when a raging fire destroyed the Capuchin prison annex, a large part of those detained in Chile for scams, fraudulent check writing and fraud could pay different rates, depending on the amenities, to be deprived of liberty there. It was a prison facility located in an old convent in the heart of downtown Santiago, with a pool table, a large visitor room, a swimming pool, a gym and a public telephone. But the fire put an end to those privileges and today this profile of defendants is referred to Capitán Yáber, a small prison located in the Justice Center neighborhood, in Santiago Centro, where today the protagonists of the major financial and crime scandals also arrive. corruption. But with the difference that no one pays to enter there anymore.
One of the last to enter Capitán Yáber, on June 3, was the mayor of the municipality of Recoleta Daniel Jadue, one of the most prominent political figures of the Communist Party, of the ruling party, although not so loved by La Moneda. He was accused by the Prosecutor’s Office of bribery, unfair administration, treasury fraud, fraud and bankruptcy crime in the framework of the investigation of the case popular pharmacies. This Wednesday he will try to reverse his situation when the Court of Appeals of Santiago reviews his request.
In the prison Jadue has been visited permanently and from there he has written two short letters in less than a week. “Comrades, friends, I sincerely appreciate the solidarity and affection that give me the strength to resist this ordeal. I am calm, standing and ready for the battles to come. A hug”, he wrote with a red pencil in the first letter. In prison, for 16 inmates, the communist mayor has met three former partners and businessmen, the brothers Daniel and Ariel Sauer and Rodrigo Topelberg, protagonists of the Factop financial scandal. Daniel Sauer is also involved in the case of the leaked audios in which he talks with lawyer Luis Hermosilla about bribes.
“Captain Yáber is the contemporary version of Capuchins,” the former director of the Gendarmerie, Chile’s prison service, socialist Claudio Martínez, tells EL PAÍS. And he remembers how the small prison has changed over the years: it started in 1950 as a facility for intoxicated detainees; He traveled to a detention center for drivers who were involved in traffic accidents under the influence of alcohol, and also for alimony debtors. Until it transformed, in the mid-2000s, into what it is today: a prison, for the most part, has been the protagonist of the so-called collar and tie crimes.
A television and ping pong
The Captain Yáber prison was renamed with that name in honor of Pedro Yáber, a former prison guard in Curicó, in central Chile, who died in 1970 in a car accident. In its transition it has had two geographical locations, always in the Justice Center neighborhood sector in downtown Santiago, where there are three other detention centers. Currently, it is an annex of the Special High Security Penitentiary Facility (REPAS), where the main leaders of national and transnational organized crime gangs are detained, including members of the Aragua Train. But they are in separate places and never cross paths.
According to a 2017 report from the National Institute of Human Rights (INDH), Captain Yáber’s cells measure approximately four square meters and house a maximum of two people, while each room has metal cots for a bunk bed. “They have no windows, so there is no natural light nor is it possible to ventilate the place. Yes, there is artificial light that comes from fluorescent tubes and lamps, whose switches are controlled by the inmates,” the document states.
In 2015, the Captain Yáber annex was in the focus of Chilean attention following the arrest of two businessmen, Carlos Alberto Délano and Carlos Lavín, in addition to Pablo Wagner, former undersecretary of Mining in the first Government of the former president of the traditional right Sebastián Piñera (2010-2014, 2018-2022), within the framework of the Penta case, a corruption process of illegal financing of politics. Also there, the former senator of the UDI, of the historic right, Jaime Orpis, who was released on parole in May 2023, served a large part of his sentence for treasury fraud and bribery.
Upon leaving, Orpis visited Captain Yáber’s detainees again and, according to the newspaper Third, did it as “a gesture of humanity” after spending 412 days deprived of liberty there. A similar situation occurred in Capuchins, where the prisoners had a tradition based on superstition: when a detainee left the prison, he returned with a cake as a gift. The belief was that if he didn’t, he would go back behind bars.
Those who knew both prisons, Captain Yáber and Capuchinos, say that they coincide only in the type of crimes, since the size of the spaces is not comparable. A well-known criminal lawyer affirms that the annex where Jadue and the Sauer brothers are located has the interior appearance of an old remodeled gym. Jorge Rodríguez, who was Orpis’ lawyer, adds that the facility, due to its simplicity, is relatively similar to “a boarding house.” [un hostal] of an old port city.”
The detention center has three large spaces: the cabins with subdivisions, a living room with an old television, a small library and a ping pong table, as well as a kitchen where the defendants can prepare their meals. On the eve of the arrival of those detained by the Penta case There was also an old pool table, but it was removed.
Another space is the visiting room, where there are white plastic tables and chairs where the detainees’ families, friends and lawyers meet, with little distance.
Businessmen and politicians
The list of detainees for cases of public connotation who have passed through this prison is extensive. Two of them have been Pablo Alcalde, former president of the La Polar department store, and Julián Moreno, who starred in one of the largest Chilean financial scandals in which three top executives defrauded more than a million customers. And, until last February, Raúl Torrealba, the former mayor of Vitacura, a wealthy municipality in Santiago, was there, accused of repeated crimes of tax fraud, illicit association, money laundering and tax crimes. He was a member of Renovación Nacional, a traditional right-wing party.
In Capitán Yáber, Torrealba coincided in his preventive detention with the businessman Francisco Frei Ruiz-Tagle, brother of the former president of the Republic, the Christian Democrat Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle (1994-2000), who was one of his victims. Francisco Frei was convicted of fraud, misappropriation, disloyal administration, fraudulent transfer and, among other crimes, malicious use of a false public and private commercial instrument.
Another of those detained, between 2018 and 2020, was the commercial engineer and former economic panelist for Chilean television, Rafael Garay. He was sentenced for repeated scams against 29 victims, for a loss of 1.2 billion Chilean pesos (approximately 1.3 million dollars). When they checked his accounts, he only had 1,250 Chilean pesos left (a little more than a dollar).
In Capitán Yáber, the detainees are in charge of cleaning the prison. And, as he said ThirdDuring his period of confinement, Garay began to work: he washed the bathrooms for 50,000 pesos a month (about $46).
Subscribe here to the EL PAÍS Chile newsletter and receive all the key information on current events in the country.
#Captain #Yáber #unique #Chilean #prison #detainees #collar #tie #crimes #contemporary #version #Capuchinos