The Chilean Supreme Court has decided to suspend the hearing of all its cases this Wednesday to meet in full, that is, with all its members, in order to deal with a scandalous and uncomfortable matter, and that the Minister of Justice of the Government of President Gabriel Boric , Luis Cordero, has called it “improper communications.” These are WhatsApp messages, revealed by the media Ciper Chilewhich include members of high echelons of the Chilean Judiciary: they show how judges of the superior courts asked favors from others to obtain appointments of notaries or sought and received political support for their own appointments.
The conversations that have been revealed are of different categories and, in addition to Cordero, the Government spokesperson, Camila Vallejo, has spoken, who told this Tuesday Radio DNA about the complaints that, “more than shock, have generated indignation in the country, because it is another case that is revealed as a possible crime of influence peddling and irregularities for the appointment processes of institutions that are very key in the justice system Chilean”. And he added: “What one hopes is that this can reach the ultimate consequences. In that, like any citizen, we as a Government also hope that this happens.”
In an interview with CNN, the Minister of Justice pointed out that the revealed dialogues “have one element in common and that is that there are communications that are inappropriate.” And he added that “there is broad agreement, including in the Supreme Court since 2015, that the appointment system has to be modified. The structural problem we have is not only in the Supreme Court, what happens is that the Supreme Court has a lot of scrutiny.” He also said that “the problem is not the Senate, but improper communications practices to promote certain candidates or certain mechanisms.”
For the second time in 2024, the appointment formula in the Judiciary, but particularly in the Supreme Court, is in question, and has been in that situation for years. Even in the two constitutional processes, in 2022 and 2023, an attempt was made to change, but the failure of both projects froze the changes. The supreme court appointment system debuted in 1997 and involves the three branches of government. First, the candidate ministers present their background to the plenary session of the highest court, which, after hearing them in a public hearing, draws up a list. Of these five names, the President of the Republic chooses one that must be ratified by two-thirds of the Senate. In the case of the judges of the Courts of Appeals, meanwhile, they present their letters to the highest court, which then sends a shortlist of those chosen to the president so that he can choose a name.
In March, the Supreme Court admitted that the appointment system “could allow some spaces of opacity” and highlighted that it had taken measures “for objectivity and transparency in the competitions for the positions of judges and ministers,” including curricular evaluation and professional career of the applicants, and, especially, “the holding of public hearings to listen to them on equal terms.” It was a statement that the Plenary Session made prompted by the revelation of conversations between the lawyer Luis Hermosilla, protagonist of the Audio case, and the Minister of the Court of Appeals Antonio Ulloa, who asked him in 2019 and 2020 for help to be appointed in the city of Santiago (he was in Copiapó, in northern Chile). At that time, the criminal lawyer Hermosilla was an advisor to the Ministry of the Interior of the Government of President Sebastián Piñera, of the traditional right (2010-2014; 2018-2022).
The messages
This time, however, the WhatsApp messages that have been published have targeted more members and former members of the Judiciary. They were obtained from the mobile phone, seized in April 2023, of the former minister of the Court of Appeals of Copiapó, Juan Antonio Poblete. The judge left the Judiciary at the beginning of last year, on the eve of it being formalized by the Prosecutor’s Office for the Operation Surveyor case, for irregularly authorizing a dozen telephone interceptions by the Army Intelligence Directorate (DINE), including journalists. Today he is in preventive detention in the Captain Yáber prison.
In one of the messages, intercepted within the framework of Operation Topographer, Poblete asked for support from Mario Desbordes, a former Minister of Defense of the Government of former President Piñera so that Judge María Teresa Letelier, then Minister of the Court of Appeals of San Miguel, part of the Metropolitan Region of Santiago, was appointed to the Supreme Court, something that occurred on May 26, 2021. The magistrate, who was postulating for the first time to the highest court, was nominated by Piñera and ratified by a unanimous vote of the Senate.
In other messages, Poblete communicated in 2021 with the Minister of the Supreme Court Mario Carroza. According to Ciper Chile, Carroza sent him a message from Judge Antonio Ulloa, in which he requested to favor the nomination of a notary for Tierra Amarilla, a municipality located in the north of the country. According to Chilean legislation, notaries, a position highly coveted by lawyers in Chile, are appointed by the President of the Republic, following a proposal of a shortlist by the Court of Appeals of each city (today a reform promoted by the Boric Administration). In addition, there was another conversation, between the now former minister and former spokesperson of the highest court Lamberto Cisternas, also with Poblete, in which he asked for his vote to help the appointment of a lawyer in her application for a notary office in Lo Barnechea, in the Metropolitan Region. from Santiago.
The messages revealed from the Poblete phone, contained in a report from the Investigative Police (PDI), also reached another former Minister of Defense of Piñera between 2018 and 2020, and current advisor to the State Defense Council, Alberto Espina. They were so that Poblete, at that time minister of the Court of Appeals of Santiago, would speed up the processing of an appeal involving the Army to remove the paintings in honor of General Manuel Contreras, former director of Augusto Pinochet’s secret police, the feared DINA, died in August 2015.
The key meeting
But it is not the only thing to be analyzed by the plenary session of the Supreme Court this Wednesday. In addition to its appointment system, it has another internal focus. Ciper Chile also public that the lawyer Gonzalo Migueles, partner of the Supreme Court Minister Ángela Vivanco, sent messages to the regional prosecutor of Aysén, Carlos Palma, who in 2022 was running to become national prosecutor (Ángel Valencia was finally elected). In the conversations, this time extracted from the phone seized from the criminal Luis Hermosilla in the Audio case, offered him to pursue a doctorate, decline his application to lead the Public Ministry and eventually take a position in another important prosecutor’s office in the northern metropolitan area of Santiago. The communication was published after Palma sent a screenshot of the dialogue with Migueles to Hermosilla.
On Sunday, Judge Ángela Vivanco issued a public statement in which she accused “prejudices and even errors” in the publication that mentions Migueles. “It is not possible that just because a person is the brother, son, partner or spouse of a magistrate, a blanket of doubts and accusations of enjoying work or being able to perform professionally can be spread over him or her because there are dark maneuvers that thus They make it possible,” he said. On Monday, in a press conference, she added about her partner: “They are personal messages from him. I’m just going to say that there has been an excess here. An excess of good faith on the one hand, which unfortunately was not considered in the same way by the other. The rest, it seems to me that there will surely be actions in the case, so it is not my place to speak out because it was not in an environment in which I had any participation.”
In the controversy, on the afternoon of this Wednesday, after the appointment the Supreme Court decided to appoint a new spokesperson, Minister Soledad Melo, who announced that as a court they agreed “it is necessary to advance in the drafting of a Code of Judicial Ethics.” A working group was also announced to propose a reform to the appointment system.
Currently, the Chilean Supreme Court has two functions, one jurisdictional and the other administrative, which gives it the power to both appoint positions and sanction. For this reason, the plenary session raised “the need to separate the jurisdictional function from the administrative function and, understanding the urgency that is required, will resume the efforts that allow achieving this objective, and file the appointments and other matters related to the judicial government in an organization that is established for this purpose.”
Complaints and an investigation
Judge Poblete’s communications in which he requested support for the appointments of authorities, including María Teresa Letelier, led to a complaint from the National Institute of Human Rights (INDH). The organism, as part of the Surveyor case starring Poblete, filed a criminal action for influence peddling.
Another legal action has been added, since Desbordes also sued for alleged prevarication. The legal action of the former Secretary of State, who has denied that there were crimes in his conversations with Judge Poblete, targets six of the INDH councilors, who are the ones who voted in favor of presenting the libel for influence peddling. “The defendants acted in an openly illegal manner, exorbiting the legally established powers regarding active legitimacy to file criminal complaints and grotesquely twisting the meaning and scope of the criminal offense of influence peddling, revealing the existence of spurious motives underlying their decision. ”says the document.
The Chilean Prosecutor’s Office, in turn, has also opened an investigation to investigate the messages of former minister Juan Antonio Poblete.
Subscribe here to the EL PAÍS Chile newsletter and receive all the key information on current events in the country.
#Complaints #influence #peddling #Chilean #Supreme #Court #system #appointments #bench