“Surprised and sad”, says Lula about Sebastián Piñera's death

The president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) said he was “surprised and sad” with the death of former president of Chile Sebastián Piñera, aged 74, this Tuesday (Feb 6, 2024).

“Surprised and saddened by the death of Sebastián Piñera, former president of Chile. We live together, we work to strengthen the relationship between our countries and we always had a good dialogue, when we were both presidents, and also when we weren't. Very sad that he passed away so abruptly. My condolences to his family and friends in Piñera for this loss.”wrote Lula in his profile on X (formerly Twitter).

The former president of Chile Sebastián Piñera, aged 74, died this Tuesday (Feb 6, 2024) in a helicopter accident. The death was confirmed around 5 pm (Brasília time) by Piñera's team. Here's the complete of the statement (PDF – 391 kB, in Spanish).

According to the Chilean newspaper La Tercera, the helicopter crashed at around 3 pm (Brasília time) in Lake Ranco, in the Los Rios region, central part of the country. The place is about 900 km from the capital Santiago.

Government sources told the newspaper that 4 people were traveling on the aircraft and 3 of them were rescued alive by emergency teams. The Navy arrived at the location where the helicopter crashed, which would have sunk about 40 meters.

Sebástian Piñera was president of Chile for 2 terms: from 2010 to 2014 and from 2018 to 2022. In 2021, he was the target of an impeachment process due to suspicions of corruption in possible irregularities in the sale of a mining company in a tax haven. The case was revealed by the Pandora Papers series. However, the Chilean Senate rejected the impeachment.

The former president had 4 children, Magdalena, Cecilia, Juan Sebastián and Cristóbal.