Campaign finance scandal causes waves in Chile as case hit courts

[Judi Lynn]

Campaign finance scandal causes waves in Chile as case hit courts

Source: Reuters - Wed, 4 Mar 2015 21:43 GMT

* Owners of Banco Penta charged with tax evasion, bribery

* Politicians also being probed

* Case is latest in wave of political and financial scandals

SANTIAGO, March 4 (Reuters) - Charges of bribery and tax evasion were formally pressed against the owners of a Chilean financial company on Wednesday, in a probe that has sucked in business leaders and politicians and angered Chileans.

Investigators formalized the allegations against Carlos Delano and Carlos Lavin, owners of Banco Penta, which has insurance operations and controls private health group Banmedica .

~ snip ~

The prosecutors said they were also looking at pressing charges against eight others for bribery and money laundering, including Pablo Wagner, who was a junior mining minister during the last right-wing administration.

The case has weighed on the popularity of the UDI, already tainted in many Chileans' eyes by its links to the 1973-1990 dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.

Last year, Pinochet's former son-in-law Julio Ponce, chairman of massive nitrates firm SQM, was fined by regulators for his role in an illicit trading ring, alongside other executives and brokers.

More:
http://www.trust.org/item/20150304214451-cmml8/

[forest444]

1. Shades of Piñera and the Bank of Talca

The Bank of Talca collapse in 1982 (led at the time by Sebastián Piñera) was the second-largest bank failure in Chilean history up to that point. Despite an arrest warrant and his decision to become a fugitive from justice, Piñera was given a pass by Pinochet's "zero-tolerance" prosecutors and ultimately of course went on to be president.

Elected by a squeaker in 2009, every prospective successor he hand-picked to run on his right-wing Alliance ticket in 2013 was compelled to drop out before accepting the nomination by corruption charges of their own. He still has the dubious honor of being Chile's least-popular president in the modern democratic era that began in 1990.

The State Department had choice words for the "sticky-fingered Ladino" -as he's often called in Chile- noting in a cable released by Wikileaks that "Like many other banks -and not unlike the recent financial crisis in the US - the Bank of Talca granted many risky loans, which initially generated substantial benefits, but eventually bankrupted it. However, Piñera and other officials at Talca went beyond the typically inappropriate business practices (of the Pinochet) era. Besides the bad loans approved, he also created dozens of fake companies, bank loans granted them and used those funds to buy more shares of the bank," says the report.

They went on to note that even in recent times, "Piñera handles both their business and their politics to the limits of the law and ethics. Some of his actions, like lending money to fictitious companies, seem to clearly cross the line into legal impropriety. Sometimes, however, he seems more a victim of circumstances, neglect or the vastness of his fortune." Aww!

http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=es&u=http://www.connuestroperu.com/mundo/14530-wikileaks-revela-pesima-opinion-de-los-ee-uu-sobre-pinera-y-bachelet&prev=search

[Judi Lynn]

2. So glad to learn from this link you've shared regarding former Pres. Piñera.

Did any of us ever read one blessed word in our own corporate media in the US on any part of this Piñera material? Of course not!
Not one peep.

It really figures, doesn't it?

The article also says Piñera got help from the Santiago newspaper. I recall we learned, from declassified documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, years later, that former President Richard M. Nixon directed the C.I.A. to pour millions of US taxpayers' dollars into the Santiago newspaper, El Mercurio to prepare the way for propaganda blasts at President Salvador Allende as part of the process of destroying him. The newspaper was owned by Agustin Edwards, I believe, and the C.I.A. also put "journalists" to work there, helping to write the "news" which all added up to derogatory pieces on Allende. They also stayed on, pouring more and more US taxpayers' dollars into El Mercurio during the years of Pinochet, to whitewash Pinochet, and to "mold public perception" in his favor, while he started tearing up the advances made by Allende, and setting his neo-liberal agenda in place.

I would think the article is saying El Mercurio maybe did the ground work for molding public perception in order to get Piñera elected. Do you think this is possible?

It never made a bit of sense that after the monster Pinochet finally fled Chile, that they would EVER elect a former Pinochet supporter.

It is reassuring to learn that my suspicions of him were well founded, although it clearly wasn't good for the normal Chilean people. Looks as if the Chilean right-wing almost felt it totally controlled Chile, just as Pinochet had said earlier, "not a blade of grass stirs without my permission," or something close to that.

They seemed to feel completely free to screw with the country's finances. Pinochet took off with tons of Chilean treasury funds, far more than he ever could have made in his lifetime, or inherited, of course, and put those funds in banks all over the world. So similar to Venezuela's Carlos Andres Perez, who also embezzled far more than he could have ever earned, or inherited, and stashed in in banks in the U.S.

You have to be a criminal at heart to be a good right-winger leader, I would say! They are drawn to the right-wing by their "ethics," or lack there-of.

Thank you for this important information.