Saw in the news recently a senator in the US found with gold bars and cash stuffed into places. Caught red handed. Have we had a scandal like that in Chile in recent years?
I don´t recall it.
We should be thankful that, out of the 200 countries in the world, Chile is probably one of the 20 or 50 least corrupt.
Chile is a good country and the people should value its politicians more than they do.
I don´t recall anyone catching Giorgio Jackson or anyone else for that matter with gold bars so that they could supposedly do favours for a foreign government.
Absolutely mad scandal in the US, 10 times worse than any I saw in Chile since I moved to Chile.
A bank account with 2.3 billion pesos and hundreds of deposits to a line from the Bank of Chile complicate Raúl Torrealba, who would be on the verge of being formalized for the crimes of treasury fraud and embezzlement of public funds.
And the cherry on top…
With this, the investigation adds a new episode to those already known in 2021, when Judge Francis Fell ordered a search of the house of the historic mayor of Vitacura in Lake Colico, where wads of bills were found hidden between the walls of the house.
Every single Chilean, no matter where they stand politically, wants to see this guy put away for good.
PS. Google Page Translation is getting really good, highly recommend!
Funny thing about this “corruption” characteristic.
Until very recently, every guide-book rag and other English language tract on Chile reaped undue praise on the country for being so very clean and free of such corruption, and every chilean fanboy booster would crow atop his own dung heap about the total absence of graft and whatnot.
How the turntables…
We are finally seeing more public admission of a small part of the enormous degree of corruption in this, a mere greasy province in the galaxy of the deceitful and underhanded Third World.
Getting back to Giorgio Jackson, perhaps you recall the episode, where he announced that he was donating half of his parliamentary salary to charity. At the time, it seemed like a noble gesture.
But it turned out that the “charity” in question was his own party, Revolución Democrática
This, coming from a guy who had loudly proclaimed the moral superiority of the new breed of young pols. What he and others was doing wasn’t strictly illegal, but the hypocrisy and dishonesty involved is a typical example of Chilean political sinvergüezura.
Of course, when these people achieved power they were able to funnel cash directly to their fundaciones truchas in a scandal that remains largely uninvestigated.
A memory refresher from Fernando Villegas from 3 years ago:
Thanks for this, very useful. I missed this and this episode hasn’t been discussed much in the media more recently (again, better journalists would have reminded us of this moment in the reporting surrounding Jackson’s resignation)
I didn’t have time to watch a 36-minute video but I did go and find where he said.
“la mitad de los recursos lo dono”
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1HSH0JSDTA
Start watching at 58 secs
Don’t bother with the rest of the video, it’s not worth it
I don’t think he said he would donate to charity, in other words the word “charity” was never used though it seems implied.
It seems like a fail by the journalists not to follow up and ask “who exactly are you donating to” not in this interview or apparently at any future point??
I think Jackson was under a lot of heat in this interview, he was sort of being attacked, so he was probably on the defensive and looking to say something to defend himself. So if it had been a momentary lapse and the next day he clarified would he meant it might have been forgivable.
But it looks like he lied (or at least said something very misleading) and never corrected it until someone else form within the political left parties pointed out the inaccuracy.
The other thing to note here is that it’s kind of dumb. Shouldn’t he realized that sooner or later the truth had to come out?
