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The Minister of Finance, Ignacio Briones, addressed the issue of market protection and the so-called Cascadas de SQM case, after the controversy caused by the notable reduction in the fine of Julio Ponce Lerou (the highest in history) , the former controller of the non-metallic mining company, which however was later appealed by the State Defense Council (CDE).
In a conversation with the Via X program, Stock Available, the Secretary of State did not hesitate and affirmed that, if these same infractions had been committed in the US, the businessman would be behind bars.
Briones affirmed that the best way to protect the market is with “competition, competition, competition” and that those who deviate from the law should be drastically sanctioned and that the relevant market players should take care of it because that is where it “flourishes” entrepreneurship.
-In a country that really defends the market, a figure like Ponce Lerou should be weight?asked the show’s host, Freddy Stock.
– ”He would be in prison, without a doubt. In the US I would be in prison, without a doubtThe authority responded, although he then said that it is not his responsibility to judge what the courts of justice fail.
It should be remembered that on September 2, 2014, the SVS (now CMF) accused Ponce of being the “ideologist and promoter of a transaction scheme that benefited him and related individuals and companies,” obtaining through transactions of shares of the cascades that control 32% of SQM a fraudulent profit of US $ 128 million.
The SVS, then directed by Fernando Coloma, issued a fine of 1,700,000 Development Units, a figure that today is equivalent to US $ 62 million. It was, then, the largest fine in history to a person for breaches of the stock market.
However, the fine was appealed by the businessman. After six years, last October, the Supreme Court ratified by 5 to 0 the existence of the infractions for which the SQM shareholder was sanctioned, but by 3 votes to 2 it reduced the sanction from the original US $ 62 million to less of US $ 3 million.
This obviously generated a lot of controversy both economically and politically. It should be noted that SQM has also been involved with the irregular financing of national politics.
Two weeks after the Supreme Court’s ruling, however, a new chapter was opened: the dispute over interests, which could be even higher than the fine of 75 thousand UF that the Constitutional Court and the Courts of Appeals and the Supreme Court ruled.
The Treasury, through the State Defense Council, affirms that the interest that must be paid has been in force since 2014, when the original fine was issued, and not since 2019, as maintained by its lawyer, Jorge Bofill.
