New offensive by Piñera’s lawyer against a prosecutor who is investigating deaths from Covid: accuses him of hiding antecedents



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A hearing of caution of guarantees presented before the Seventh Court of Guarantee of Santiago Samuel Donoso, the lawyer of the President of the Republic, Sebastián Piñera. In this case, the prosecution investigates the alleged responsibility of the President and other health authorities, for an alleged negligent act that would have resulted in the death of people suffering from Covid-19.

This is a case that was opened after the July 3 Senator Alejandro Navarro file a complaint in against Piñera, the former Minister of Health Jaime Mañalich and the Undersecretary of Assistance Networks Arturo Zúñiga, for the illicit assumptions of refusal or delay of protection or service, denial of service, omissionate homicide and ideological falsification of public instrument. In the presentation, Navarro accused the authorities in relation to “the questionable choice of alternative methodologies that underestimated the number of sick and deceased” and “the measures taken by the government to combat the pandemic” at the national level.

Later, a second complaint filed by the Chilean Human Rights Commission entered the same court against Piñera, Mañalich, Zúñiga and Orlando Durán, former head of the Primary Care Division of the Undersecretariat of Healthcare Networks. The legal action imputes the crimes of incompatible negotiations and influence peddling, in relation to the alleged irregularities in the contracting of hotels that are used as sanitary residences; in addition to the illicit denial of assistance and abandonment of services linked to the alleged failed strategies implemented by the government.

The High Complexity Central North prosecutor Marcelo Carrasco grouped both complaints and now they are being investigated together.

In the framework of this case -for which this Tuesday the prosecutor and the PDI went to seize records from the Ministry of Health- Donoso accused the Public Ministry of not delivering the necessary investigation information to exercise his right to defense.

Thus, he indicated that after the court determined on August 19 that the prosecution should update the case file every Monday of each week, he accused that the Public Ministry “It has not provided this defense with a full copy of the investigative folder, nor has it proceeded to give a faithful record of all the actions carried out in the User Information and Attention System (hereinafter“ SIAU ”), and that therefore This party has not been able to access a full copy of the investigative file or the full record of movements in the case, this being essential to be able to exercise the right to defense in a reasonable and timely manner ”.

In that sense, the defender said that “That the malpractice of the Public Ministry has been able to be verified by this defense during the almost three weeks in which the court’s decision had to be complied with (…) because despite being insistently requested, the Public Ministry has paid attention ignoring the intentions of this intervener ”.

He then gave examples of the alleged breaches, noting that “In neither of the two deliveries that were made previously, that is to say on August 24 and 31, did they contain information regarding the delivery or less record of the statement of the witness Johanna Acevedo (former chief of Epidemiology of the Minsal and current chief of the Health Planning Division), who declared via zoom on August 5 and 13 of the current year, fourteen days before the first delivery and whose statement was not included in any of the aforementioned deliveries, which violates without place you doubt the right to defense of this intervener ”.

He added that the prosecution “justified the non-incorporation of this statement (…) because the declarant’s signature was missing, a reason that does not explain at all its non-incorporation.”

For those who presented the actions against Piñera, the accusation of the President’s lawyer is a strategy to discredit the work of the Public Ministry, in the same line of the request made to the National Prosecutor Jorge Abbott so that Marcelo Carrasco would not continue in charge of the case .

The president of the Chilean Commission of Human Rights, Carlos Margotta, noted that what Donoso is doing “is totally inappropriate and contrary to the spirit that encourages this plaintiff in terms of the need for the courts and prosecutors to use all their powers in order to investigate the serious crimes that are being subjected to their knowledge. However, what the defense of the President does is an attempt to intimidate and harass the prosecutor in order to inhibit the progress of the investigation, it is an interference with the competences and attributions of the Judicial Power as well as the Public Ministry ”. Along these lines, he said that he hopes that the caution of guarantees will be rejected.

Meanwhile, Alejandro Navarro said that “the hearing of precautionary guarantees on September 22 requested by the defense of Sebastián Piñera, does not take into account that since June 6 the prosecution has requested various offices from the seremías and the State institutions to move the process forward. “However, he indicated that there has not yet been a response to those requirements.

Ramón Sepúlveda, a lawyer representing Recoleta Mayor Daniel Jadue, in another complaint with similar characteristics, indicated that Piñera’s defense also presented “a guarantee of guarantee that had no merit, because as stated by the prosecutor Marcelo Carrasco and the prosecutor Ximena Chong, the copies were at the disposal of the lawyers in the prosecution system, from where they, as well as all users at the national level, must download the copies, with exceptions in which they are delivered materially. ,

Thus, he pointed to a “strategy that seeks to hinder the actions of the Public Ministry that has a large workload and that also seeks to obtain privileged conditions for its clients.”

The hearing was set for September 22 at 11:00.



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