Chile's Pinera impacted by Pandora Papers

[Judi Lynn]

3. Sane Chileans have known from the first the current President has always been a Pinochet supporter,

made all to clear to the world long ago, when Sebastián Piñera's brother, José Piñera





José Piñera Echenique (born October 6, 1948) is a Chilean economist, one of the famous Chicago Boys, who served as minister of Labor and Social Security, and of Mining, in the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.[1] He is the architect of Chile's private pension system based on personal retirement accounts. Piñera has been called "the world's foremost advocate of privatizing public pension systems"[2] as well as "the Pension Reform Pied Piper" (by the Wall Street Journal).[3] He is now Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank based in Washington, President of the International Center for Pension Reform based in Santiago, Senior Fellow at the Italian libertarian think tank Istituto Bruno Leoni, and member of the Advisory Board of the Vienna-based Educational Initiative for Central and Eastern Europe. He has a master's degree and a Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University. Piñera is a Board Member in Chile and an active supporter of SOS Children's Villages, the largest orphan and abandoned children's charity in the world. Today, Piñera is director of the magazine Economía y Sociedad, that was relaunched in November 2016.

. . .

After promoting a plan of free market reforms that he considered could double Chile's annual rate of growth to 7%, he became, first, Secretary of Labor and Social Security (1978–1980), and then, Secretary of Mining (1980–1981), in the cabinet of General Augusto Pinochet. As such, he was responsible for four structural reforms: the creation of a retirement system based on private personal accounts (the AFP system), the opening of the private health and disability insurance system, the redesign of the labor code changing the terms of trade union elections, and the constitutional law on mining. Piñera entered the cabinet in December 1978 when Chile faced two serious external threats: a possible war with Argentina over the disputed Beagle Islands and a trade boycott by the American AFL-CIO labor confederation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Pi%C3%B1era



Various "Chicago Boys"
(Working on creating the "perfect crime"?)

~ ~ ~

Many images with their articles on "Villa Grimaldi", Pinochet's most famous torture center, one of many, where thousands were tortured and many murdered. The western corporate media has been VERY quiet about the raging hell on earth going on south of the border, funded by the hard-earned tax dollars of US citzens without their knowledge:

https://tinyurl.com/h8882csp

Wikipedia:

Villa Grimaldi is considered the most important of DINA’s (Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional, the Chilean secret police) many complexes that were used for the interrogation and torture of political prisoners during the governance of Augusto Pinochet.[1] It is located at Avenida José Arrieta 8200 (now 8401) in Peñalolén, on the outskirts of Santiago, and was in operation from mid-1974 to mid-1978. About 4,500 detainees were brought to Villa Grimaldi during this time, at least 240 of whom "disappeared" or were killed by DINA. It was also the location of the headquarters of the Metropolitan Intelligence Brigade (BIM).[2] The head of Villa Grimaldi during the Pinochet dictatorship, Marcelo Moren Brito, was later convicted of crimes against humanity and sentenced to more than 300 years in prison.[3][4]

History
For most of the 19th and 20th centuries, the three-acre estate was a gathering place for many of Chile's artists and intellectuals. Over the years Villa Grimaldi's various owners hosted parties and cultural events. The structures included meeting rooms, entertainment halls, and a theater, as well as a school that was open to the entire community. It was a gathering place for many left wing and progressive cultural and political figures during the Popular Unity years, the period associated with the election of Salvador Allende, a Socialist, to Chile’s presidency in 1970.[2]

This liberal atmosphere changed suddenly when General Augusto Pinochet seized power in a military coup d’etat on September 11, 1973. Chile's wealthy oligarchy, the Nixon administration, and the Central Intelligence Agency, were among the supporters of Allende's overthrow. The owner of Villa Grimaldi at the time of the coup, Emile Vassallo, was pressured to sell the estate to the new government in order to protect his family.[5] This is one of the first examples of the state of siege that was enforced under Pinochet for the next 17 years. His regime began to detain thousands of political activists, students, workers, trade unionists, and any other subversive individuals who spoke out against his military government.[6]

. . .

An estimated 4,500 people were detained at Villa Grimaldi, and of those at least 226 "disappeared" forever.[7] Victims included Carlos Lorca, the British physician Sheila Cassidy, the MAPU leader Juan Maino, the CEPAL diplomat Carmelo Soria, and future Chilean President Michelle Bachelet, who was tortured with her mother.[8] Prisoners were supposedly detained for interrogation but their detention usually lasted for long periods of time without explanation and many prisoners were subject to torture. According to the Rettig Report, they were kept in several different living situations: The tower, a tall structure containing ten narrow spaces measuring 70 x 70 centimetres and two metres high in which multiple prisoners were held. The tower also contained a torture chamber. Apparently, people brought to the tower were detainees considered to be of some importance and whose stage of intense interrogation had finished. Many prisoners who went to the tower were never seen again. Chile houses were wooden structures designed for solitary confinement. They consisted of vertical sections similar to closets in which the person had to remain standing in darkness for several days (standing cells). Corvi houses were small wooden rooms built inside a larger room, each containing a bunkbed. This was supposedly where prisoners stayed while they were undergoing intense interrogation and torture.[9]

More:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Villa_Grimaldi