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After yesterday, in a 3-2 split ruling, the Supreme Court authorized partial access of emails to the North Central Prosecutor’s Office, which had been denied by the Ministry of Health (Minsal) a month ago, today the guarantee court resolved the formula in which that delivery will be made.
Specifically, the Public Ministry requires the e-mails of former Minister of Health Jaime Mañalich, his former chief of staff Itziar Linazasoro and the Undersecretary of Health, Paula Daza, within the framework of a criminal investigation for alleged reckless spread of pathogenic germs in the pandemic.
First, the prosecution tried to obtain them with a court order from the Seventh Guarantee Court of Santiago. However, the Minsal denied their access because it could affect national security.
Now, with the resolution of the Supreme Court, the Public Ministry was given the green light to access all communications linked “to the verification of the criminal acts reported”, excluding emails related to “the acquisition of essential supplies to face the pandemic”, and those that are related to the “allocation of troops and military and police resources to strategic tasks related to Covid-19”.
Thus, today the judge of the Seventh Guarantee Court of Santiago Patricio Álvarez authorized the Public Ministry to obtain -through experts from the PDI’s Laboratory of Criminalistics and Cybercrime, under the supervision of the prosecutor- “two forensic copies (copy A and copy B) of all the emails on which the measure falls ”.
The magistrate points out that later the prosecution must keep copy A “as communications withheld (…) as a ‘witness copy’, under chain of custody and without being able to access it.”
And copy B will be delivered to the Minister of Health Enrique Pariswho will have a maximum period of three days to “single out the electronic communications that correspond to the exceptional cases provided” by the Supreme Court, that is, those that could affect national security.
Later, the prosecution will be able to “review the documents singled out” by Paris and extract from copy A “the communications that comply with the exception rule set by the Supreme Court.”
In this way, says the judge, the prosecution will only be able to access the copy with the emails purged by Minister Paris and analyze that information. The rest will be out of reach.
The court’s resolution is given after it was the Public Ministry that requested the authorization to carry out this proposed procedure and thus proceed to the seizure.
