The national tax, Jorge Abbottannounced this Friday afternoon that the Public Ministry opened an investigation after the declarations of the interior minister, Izkia Sicheswhen he assured that during the government of former President Sebastián Piñera one of the migrant expulsion flights left Chile and returned with all the passengers.
As Abbott explained, a lawyer -Gene Fernández Llerena- filed the complaint against the chief of staff before the Valparaíso regional prosecutor’s office for the crimes of “failure to report” -for being aware of a possible crime and not reporting it to the Public Ministry- and for “Official crimes that could have been committed in the previous government.”
Consequently, “an investigation has already been opened and it will be in the context of that investigation that it will have to be established whether there is indeed a fact that constitutes a crime with respect to actions that could have occurred in the past, or eventually actions that would have occurred recently,” said Abbott after the inauguration of the Quintero Local Prosecutor’s Office.
On the other hand, the prosecutor explained that “It makes no sense to start an investigation ex officio if there is already a complaint.”
Finally, he stressed that “all the necessary steps must be taken in order to establish whether, in fact, acts that may constitute crimes and, in the event that they are, then make the corresponding decisions and if not, simply apply the term that in accordance with the law.”
Meanwhile, the fiscal regional, Claudia Perivancichpointed out that in general terms the complaint, “requests to investigate the existence of a crime related to the public function, or with a possibility of configuring a crime of omission to report by the minister.”
The complaint, as indicated by Perivancich, is assigned to the Regional Anticorruption Unit, in charge of Prosecutor Claudio Reveco, who would have already started with the proceedings.
The Wednesday afternoon, the Secretary of State, in the middle of a session of the Citizen Security Commission of the Chamber of Deputies, denounced what One of the planes that left the country during the government of Sebastián Piñera carrying expelled Venezuelan citizens would have returned to the country with all its passengers.
At about 10:30 p.m. on the same day, the former minister of the portfolio, Rodrigo Delgado, went out to the step of the sayings of Siches. Via Twitter he wrote: “I absolutely reject the statements of Minister Siches in the Security Commission of the Chamber and I request that you now disclose the specific background of your complaint, the date of the flight and the list of passengers who would have returned to Chile.”
After Delgado’s statements, the former president of Colmed apologized through the same social network. “Today (Wednesday) in the Security Commission of the Chamber of Deputies and Deputies I issued incorrect information. For this, in a republican spirit, I apologize to Rodrigo Delgado and his team, “he said.
The day after what happened (Thursday), the minister met with the Presidente Gabriel Boric Thursday, who called you to attention in private and then he gave him his public endorsement.
On the other hand, the opposition -as a bloc- questioned Siches’s false complaint and sent a letter to the government asking for explanations. And already in the afternoon of Thursday, a summary investigation was opened to clarify the delivery of the information.
But, in addition, the opposition deputies -RN, UDI, Evópoli and Republicans- submitted an official letter to the Comptroller General this morning for alleged non-compliance by the minister, in relation to the “duty of reporting established in the Code of Criminal Procedure and the Administrative Statute”.
The parliamentarians maintain that the minister maintained “a special tone of conviction” in his speech in the Lower House, and that “It is hinted that she had access to information, was alerted or knew sources about a potential illicit criminal sanction”and they accuse that “he omitted his duty to report facts that he considered to be true and reliable, or failing that, knowingly made false statementswhat matters, at least, an infringement of the Principle of Probity that must inform the actions of all public servants”.