The Chilean Senate rejected on Tuesday (16) the beginning of the impeachment process against President Sebastián Piñera. It took 29 votes among the 43 senators for the action to be accepted. Until the publication of this text, 17 parliamentarians declared themselves in favor of the opening and 14 against, with 1 abstention. As 11 demonstrations are missing, the process is no longer mathematically possible.
The action against the Chilean representative is linked to his appearance in the so-called Pandora Papers, in a case that investigates a possible conflict of interest involving the sale of a mining company linked to his family.
The case was judged in the Chilean Legislative just a few days before the first round of presidential elections, scheduled for next Sunday (21). According to the most recent survey, by the Cadem institute, who leads the race is the ultra-right candidate José Antonio Kast, with 25% of the voting intentions, followed by the leftist Gabriel Boric, with 19%.
Yasna Provost, center-left, has 9%, ahead of Sebastián Sichel, with 8%. The latter has seen his candidacy deflate as a direct impact of the strain Piñera is subjected to with the accusations — the president supports the name of the center-right.
If poll results hold, there will be a second round on December 19 between Kast and Boric.
This Tuesday, the senators voted separately on two issues in the lawsuit against the president: the violation of the principle of probity and the right to live in an environment free from contamination; and the grave compromise of the nation’s honor.
In the morning, between 9:30 am and 1:30 pm, the prosecution’s arguments and the attorney’s attorneys were heard. The three parliamentarians designated to formalize the process were Leonardo Soto (Socialist Party), Gabriel Silber (Christian Democracy) and Gael Yeomans (Social Convergence); the defense was led by lawyer Jorge Galvéz.
A poll by the Ipsos Institute released last week showed that 60% of Chileans say they are in favor of the president’s impeachment, which is currently only 20% popular.
The impeachment process reached the Senate after being approved by deputies last week by 78 to 67 votes, in addition to 3 abstentions.
The session in the Chamber will also be remembered for an anecdotal fact: Deputy Jorge Naranjo was forced to speak for 15 uninterrupted hours, in order to extend the session until early morning the following day, so that leftist colleague Giorgio Jackson could attend and vote. Jackson had been serving a quarantine, which ended at midnight, having been in contact with someone infected with the coronavirus, presidential candidate Boric.
The lawsuit against Piñera began after the release of the Pandora Papers. The journalistic investigation, led by the ICIJ (International Consortium of Investigative Journalists), revealed that the agent had carried out an operation with a potential conflict of interest involving an offshore account in the British Virgin Islands.
The sale of mining company Dominga, which belonged to the family of the current head of the Executive, was closed in 2010, the year in which Piñera also occupied the Presidency of Chile. According to news reports, the buyer, a close friend of the politician, demanded that an environmental area not be created in the company’s operating zone, which would hinder the exploration of ore in the region.
The transaction, which involved US$ 152 million (R$ 838 million), would be divided into three installments, the last of which would only be released if the protection area required by activists was not established. At the time, the government ended up not delimiting the area as a green zone, and the payment, therefore, would have been confirmed. The Chilean Public Ministry is also investigating the case.
Piñera’s defense claims that the agent turned over his business in 2009 to a trust — a mechanism for the temporary assignment of assets for the administration of third parties. In reality, Piñera was separating from some of his companies only after criticism and accusations revealed by the press since the beginning of his first term.
Still, the president says the case revealed by the Pandora Papers is not among them. The completion of the sale of the mining company, however, according to the journalistic investigation, took place nine months after the inauguration.
In addition to the episode linked to the Pandora Papers, which gave rise to his impeachment process, Piñera faces image erosion because of the Constituent Assembly, formed after claims of large protests that set the country on fire in 2019, and because of friction with the Mapuche peoples.
Last month, he announced the militarization of four zones in regions inhabited by these indigenous peoples after, in a protest by these peoples in the capital, a woman was killed in a clash with police officers. Constituent parliamentarians called for an investigation into possible abuses committed by Chilean security forces.
The case of the Pandora Papers, which came to light in early October, also involved Brazilian figures. The Minister of Economy, Paulo Guedes, and the President of the Central Bank, Roberto Campos Neto, were exposed in the investigation. In the case of Guedes, investigations show that, in 2014, he opened an offshore in the British Virgin Islands, in which he deposited US$9.55 million (R$23 million at the time). The company was declared to the Revenue.
The Code of Conduct of the High Federal Administration prohibits top government officials from holding financial investments that may be affected by government policies. After Guedes assumed the Ministry of Economy, in 2019, the Public Ethics Commission, however, judged that the case did not constitute a conflict of interest. Campos Neto would own an offshore company in Panama.
Both deny wrongdoing.
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