They’ve detained Daniel Andrade. I just hope this opens the floodgates and EVERYONE, no matter what side of the political spectrum they stand, are brought to justice if they are guilty.
For the non-spanish speakers. The key points from the article:
Arrests of Daniel Andrade and Carlos Contreras: Daniel Andrade, a representative of the controversial foundation Democracia Viva, and Carlos Contreras, former regional ministerial secretary (Seremi) of Housing in Antofagasta, were arrested in connection with the “Caso Convenios” scandal.
Circumstances and Locations of Arrest: Andrade was arrested at his mother’s house in the Metropolitan region, while Contreras was apprehended inside the Arturo Merino Benítez International Airport.
Judicial Process and Corruption Charges: This action was a reserved procedure ordered by the Court of Guarantee (Juzgado de Garantia) at the request of the Antofagasta Prosecutor’s Office, about six months after the scandal broke. The arrests followed the Public Prosecutor’s Office’s decision to separate the cases, aiming to issue arrest orders and make the individuals involved available to justice. They are to be formally charged with corruption offenses relating to questionable money transfers from the Antofagasta Housing Seremi to Democracia Viva. Both Andrade and Contreras were closely associated with the congresswoman Catalina Pérez.
Ongoing Judicial Process: The article notes that this is an ongoing judicial process and that the charges against the individuals may be dismissed at the end of the investigation. Therefore, they should not be considered guilty until the court issues a verdict against them.
I believe it would be a patagoniaxiom* (great portmanteau even if I do say so myself) that this country has never been on the rails. But it has had superlative public relations and country image that have kept the realities of its considerable endemic corruption from being understood even by its residents. Part of being your own worst enemy is " no hay más ciego que él que no quiere ver."
And yes, it is huge.
*Patagoniaxiom: (n). Axiomatic description of the unfortunate objective realities occluded by the lens of sincerely wishing it were not so. See also: cognitive dissonance.
Conversely. there’s another lot here who believe that things are they way they want them to be, and not as they really are, “wishful thinkers” is the descriptive term generally used.
Cathy Barriga only got house arrest while they investigate the fraud charges during her time as mayor of Maipú. The amount involved is much more than the Democracia Viva case, but, of course, she’s well connected. The prosecutor has appealed.
We had earlier discussed that Chile is finally beginning to understand that it is just another corrupt Latin American country, that the earlier clean image was little more than denial and public relations invention. And increasingly that means uncovering not just the fraud at a national level, but the enormous corrupt activity at a municipal level.
Quick and dirty translation of the opinion piece a couple of weeks ago in Biobiochile:
“Chile is going through a deep corruption crisis that has not missed local governments. The magnitude of this crisis is reflected in empirical evidence that includes fraud involving billions of pesos, more than 200 lawsuits filed by the Consejo de Defensa del Estado [‘State Defense Council’] in nearly 40% of the country’s municipalities, and about 700 ongoing investigations by the Public Prosecutor’s Office in all of Chile’s regions.”
No “arrests” unless a few House Arrests are counted.
In the aforementioned CDE, the Consejo de Defensa del Estado de Chile Boric designated several Councillors, which has tipped its political balance to the Left.
Here’s an interview with an -ex counselor who resigned in protest.
María Inés Horvitz presented her resignation as CDE advisor.
Until now she had not explained the reasons.
In this interview with CIPER she points out her concern with the growing politicization of the Council, which she claims has been increasing since the social outbreak.(2019 riots)
She states that in the Caso Convenios, the CDE did not resist political pressures, and she would have liked to present a complaint with all the information on the table. (I actually suspect that in the Caso Convenios affair, the government colluded with Revolución Democrática (Boric’s Party), to defraud the state
But she does not limit himself to talking about the reasons for her resignation: she maintains that the State is not prepared to confront corruption.
She detected flaws in the functioning of the prosecutor’s office, the Comptroller’s Office and the Judiciary, and affirms that corruption in the municipalities is “intolerable”.
Like many other local scandals these casos convenios will only remain visible until the next one comes along to bury it, something the pols are all too well aware off. Nothing much will happen to the guilty…
No probs.
Most of politics and justice here is a whited sepulcre.
Here’s the president of the CDE, being attacked by the commies in the days when it was still politically neutral. This is how they tried to “influence” the Tribunal’s decisions through intimidation, terror tactics they later successfully employed against parliament in the 2019 riots.
