Chilean President Sebastián Piñera will go to impeachment for “compromising the honor of the nation.” The left and center benches they agreed on it on Tuesday afternoon. The scandal is due to the leak of Pandora Papers that link the president with the business of a mining company.
Last Sunday, Chile was shaken by the data revealed by the investigation of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, known as Pandora Papers. The documents pointed directly to the family of President Sebastián Piñera, for the sale in the Virgin Islands of the Dominga Mine.
It is a project, in the north-central part of the country, whose environmental approval depended directly on the administration that was already leading -in 2010-, the same.
Sebastián Piñera participates in the Directing Council of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO). Photo: Xinhua
The operation involved his family. A company, named Mediterranean, composed of their children, agreed to sell its stake to the company of Piñera’s best friend, businessman Carlos Alberto Délano, convicted in the past for irregular financing to politics in Chile.
Specifically, the most complex fact is that, of the total of 152 million dollars agreed for the operation, the third payment, of ten million dollars, depended on the fact that the area was not decreed for its natural conservation. The decision depended on the government of the day, the first administration of Sebastián Piñera in 2010.
The data had already been known in 2017, when Piñera faced a judicial investigation from which he was dismissed, in three different instances. However, public opinion was not known the third clause and the conditional payment.
Protesters protest against the Dominga mining project in Chile. Photo: AFP
Now the opposition has agreed constitutionally accuse the president for “serious breaches of probity” and “compromising the honor of the nation.” An accusation that must be declared admissible in the Chamber of Deputies and then be evaluated and voted on –as impeachment- in the Senate.
All this, in the middle of the presidential elections on November 19 in Chile.
Santiago, Chile, special
News in development
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