“It has no foundation”: Prosecutor’s Office goes to the Supreme Court and questions Paris for opposing the delivery of Mañalich emails

The controversy over access to the emails of the former Minister of Health, Jaime Mañalich, of his then chief of staff Itziar Linazasoro and of the undersecretary Paula Daza reached the Supreme Court in the framework of the criminal investigation for the death figures from Covid-19, which was opened after a complaint from Senator Alejandro Navarro.

After the refusal of the current head of that portfolio, Enrique Paris, to a seizure of said conversations invoking an alleged risk to “national security”, ehe Central North regional prosecutor, Xavier Armendariz, appealed to the country’s highest court to settle the dispute.

“I ask this most excellent Court to declare that such resistance (to the delivery of mail by Paris) to the judicial order issued, lacks foundation and therefore, the order in question must be executed in its entirety, according to the precise content of its content, ”says the document accessed by La Tercera PM. For the Prosecutor’s Office, the same document points out, it is essential to access the emails, since it maintains that “The information processed by the State agencies in charge of facing the pandemic is essential for making decisions and must be communicated to the population on a permanent basis. The same Influenza Plan establishes on page 72 that public information must be pertinent and updated ”.

In order for the Supreme Court to accept the request, the prosecutor Armendariz reports a series of statements related to the judicial file that – in his opinion and of the guarantee judge who ordered the raids of the Ministry of Health – would shed light on eventual irregularities around the number of deaths from Covid-19 in the country and the strategies adopted by the health authority before the pandemic.

The first of them is related to the statement of the Minister of Sciences, Andrés Couve, who stated before the Public Ministry that he participates in the social table and the Data sub-table and that Its objective was to provide information from the Ministry of Health so that researchers could carry out scientific studies, modeling, etc..

“He indicates that he is unaware of the functioning of the DEIS (Department of Health Statistics and Information) that depends on the MINSAL and affirms that changes in methodology, such as the one that occurred with the incorporation of new categories of cases (such as suspects), or the correction of confirmed deceased cases were not consistent with the data table. It also indicates that the concept of “New Normal” did not come from the Social Table. Especially striking is the fact that do not know or handle the distinction between proven and suspected cases of Covid contagion, for the purposes of accounting for deaths associated with the pandemic”, Says the letter regarding what Couve declared in court.

Another of the key pieces of the file for deaths by Covid, which the Public Ministry exposes so that the Supreme Court allows the seizure of Mañalich’s emails is the declaration of Johanna Acevedo, head of the Health Planning Division (Diplas) and that she was previously the head of the Department of Epidemiology at Minsal.

“He does not know the criteria to define what was reported, but states that at some point there was an unsustainable gap between the information that was publicly communicated daily, with that which was generated from its Division. For this reason, on April 29 he would have sent an email making present that between the confirmed cases reported that day and those they had registered there was a difference of 90 (people). He points out that it was only on May 19 that the minister (Mañalich) asked him to speak to prepare the report, ”the letter says.

Immediately afterwards, part of the questioning of the professional is reproduced in the letter: “At the beginning of March or April the differences were minimal and were attributable to the reception of the information, and that is normal, if there were 2 or 3 it did not matter, because the next day it was made up. But when they were 90 it was the milestone that marked the beginning of the differences, which began to grow day by day, exceeding 30,000 when Minister Mañalich left the MINSAL (…) Later the Comptroller’s report came out stating that there were cases that were not reported, but those cases were always reported to the MINSAL authority, from the date I indicate, May 19, with the report that we sent to diary. In other words, the gap that the Comptroller’s Office says was in public information, not in what we handled internally in MINSAL”Was what Acevedo declared before the Prosecutor’s Office.

Likewise, Armendariz’s letter states that despite the specialization of this official, neither she, nor the advisory council would have participated in the selective quarantine strategy. “It indicates that knowing the number of cases by geographic area is relevant for making decisions such as quarantines, since the risk for a given area depends on the communicable cases in that area. Despite his position, when asked, he says he does not know how the dynamic quarantine decision was made. He did not observe on the occasions that she was present that the Advisory Council had been consulted. Nor is it known that epidemiological information had any role in these decisions, “says the brief regarding Acevedo’s judicial statement.

The importance of accessing Mañalich’s emails, says the Public Ministry, falls on information from those who have testified in the case about possible warnings to the authority that would have been ignored. “He indicates that on May 5 he sent an email to Minister Mañalich with a minute about the registration of the deceased, since on May 3 he had noticed a more relevant difference in the public report of deaths in relation to the one they produced from the DEIS ”Declared the head of Diplas.

The Supreme Court will have to decide if it proceeds with the seizure of emails already ordered by the guarantee judge Darwin Bratti and if the arguments put forward by Minister Paris are within those that Article 209 of the Criminal Procedure Code provides for an authority to oppose an intrusive measure.

The current head of Health assured in a letter sent to the prosecutor Marcelo Carrasco on September 8 that “I will oppose the diligence to be carried out, by virtue of the right conferred by article 209 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, related to the opposition to the practice of entry and registration procedures in special places. It for when National security could be affected with the review and knowledge of reserved documents”. Two days before, Paris himself had given another argument to oppose the diligence of the Public Ministry and it was the reservation of antecedents that the law on the Rights and Duties of patients protects.

Lawyer Eduardo Riquelme, Interior advisor and private defender of Daza, explained to La Tercera PM that among the sensitive information that was in those emails was the purchase of ventilators and the health strategy in the face of a pandemic. Said arguments are collected in the Armendariz document and, in the opinion of the Prosecutor’s Office, “it is not observed how the health and security strategies to control the pandemic, which are largely the object of investigation, could“ obviously ”affect state security. Nor how could conversations with foreign suppliers for fan purchases do it. And, although it is evident, it is worth noting, the investigative folder can only be accessed by the intervening parties, having for the rest, or for all, a secret character ”.

The Public Ministry specified that it wants to access emails from public officials that are relevant to its investigation. “Is about Institutional boxes of public officials that contain information related to activities related to the performance of their functions, with respect to which there is a reasonable public interest that mitigates, as has been indicated by this very Excellency Supreme Court and the Council for Transparency, among others, The right to privacy, because the electronic supports, in this case, contain relevant information for the public administration and therefore, subject to transparency obligations ”, the document reads.

The Prosecutor’s Office also questions that the purchase of fans is an argument to deny access to the e-mails of Mañalich and Daza and emphasizes that “the purchase of fans is an irrelevant event for this cause. What is being investigated is the responsibility that, eventually, would have fallen to some authorities, in the spread of the pandemic and the incidence of their actions or omissions in the spread of disease and the occurrence of its pernicious consequences. Nothing else”.

They add that State purchases are subject to the public sector’s own advertising regime and that the purchase of fans has been audited by the press and reported by the Government itself. “In other words, the purchase of these inputs, far from constituting a reserved, secret or excluded matter from public auditing, it constitutes a matter that is subject to the transparency regime proper to public sector expenditures, which is not consistent with the character of “State Secret” that the Ministry of Health intends to attribute to it, “says Armendariz.

“Lastly, we cannot fail to mention how absurd it would mean, within the framework of an investigation into the ministerial conduct of the central authorities regarding pandemic management, having to require, one by one, authorization to access the information of all patients or those affected by their measures. It goes without saying that something like this would de facto prevent the inquiry. This, without prejudice to the fact that, it is reiterated, no individual information is required, only general data about the pandemic outbreak. In any case, neither the one or the other purported justification finds any link with national security, nor is there a glimpse of how it could affect it “, ends.