Almost a month had passed since the mayoress of Vitacura, Camila Merinoon August 18, 2021, he informed the community council that he had filed a complaint with the Public Ministry for a series of irregularities in money flows in Vita Salud and Vita Deportes, and that it pointed to the administration of the former community chief Raúl Torrealba, when he refers to his state of mind in a conversation captured by the PDI, which at that time already had judicial authorization to tap his telephone: “They crucified me while I was alive… horrible”.
It was September 12 when the former municipal authority spoke with an unidentified male person, unaware that their calls were being listened to carefully by a civil police team.
NN: Hello, compadre, how are we?
RAUL TORREALBA: How are you? Here we go po’ hue…, whore not well.
NN: Slowly like Armandito.
RAUL TORREALBA: That’s right, so… And how are you?
NN: Very well, hey, well, it’s not that I wanted to tell you that yesterday the sound was very bad and we didn’t have time to talk very well, that I had a conversation with our friend Sergio from there the first time.
RAUL TORREALBA: Yeah, perfect.
NN: Whore, he told me hue… that the staff was in complete mourning, the difference between one character and another, at the head of the commune is tremendous, he told me, the people are but really in mourning, he told me, because I empathy said, how it helped them, how the “Trunk” pushed them, it told me. Look, he told me, the difference mightn’t be more appalling.
RAUL TORREALBA: Sipo, they crucified me while I was alive, horrible smell…
NN: Why?
RAUL TORREALBA: They crucified me a day one po hue…, if for two weeks I have not released any newspaper… nobody… they raided my house in Santiago, here hue…
NN: Put…
RAUL TORREALBA: Okay, but.
NN: It’s that the problem is that, the problem is when the people closest to you, who you trust the most, fail in that way too, well, no one is prepared for that.
In that same conversation they refer to those who have given them support, especially their friends in the face of the judicial situation they are facing. Then continue:
NN: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s good that you’re with your friends, you know they’re hue people…, they’re people who, unlike others, were close by interested positions, being with friends who don’t want to, help, mate, so take advantage of it, to talk, to loosen the tongue, it is necessary, relax a little.
On October 25 of that same year, the PDI, in a report in which it transcribed 45 hours of calls from Torrealba, recorded a conversation with Felipe – presumably Felipe Assadi, director of the Vitacura Cultural Corporation. There it is revealed how Torrealba, already out of the mayor’s office, seeks to reverse a change in the statutes in the corporations that Mayor Merino wanted to promote in order to change directors and have more control of the non-profit cultural organizations, the “Vita”. The audios are relevant today for the prosecution, since it is precisely those distributions from where it is suspected that the former community chief withdrew money that he later would have deposited in cash in his accounts.
FELIPE: There.
RAUL TORREALBA: Don Felipe, how are you? Raul.
FELIPE: How are you, Trunk?
RAUL TORREALBA: Pu…, here I am.
FELIPE: So many years…
RAUL TORREALBA: Banished to the south by po’ hue… Stripped of everyone, because yes and why not and others po’ hue… Hey, I’m calling you for the following, almost all your colleagues from the cultural corporation have called me, who have directory today.
PHILIP: Yes.
RAUL TORREALBA: And that the mayoress intends to modify the board of directors, which means that the corporation, unlike what it was, where you were, where the Cote was, was there, they had heard… that we all met, because Vitacura is a handkerchief and we know everything, but there was no affinity or sports club, or religion, or girlfriend or weed, or even a hue…, we were friends for being from Vitacura and being of a similar generation. (What she) seeks to a certain extent is a more political management of the corporation and that they are not willing to accept it, I have been discussing this with several of them, I don’t know if you have spoken with any of them, Felipe.
FELIPE: No, Mario Olivo was calling me today.
RAUL TORREALBA: Of.
FELIPE: And, I was in a meeting all morning.
RAUL TORREALBA: Of.
FELIPE: And, I called him now and I had his secretary to call when he got back following lunch.
RAUL TORREALBA: Of.
FELIPE: It struck me that he was calling me for something like that.
RAUL TORREALBA: I believe that there is no reason for the change or at least it is not (indecipherable), it is an institution that has been operating for more than 30 years and well.
FELIPE: I don’t know exactly what she wants to do, but to me, the time she called me, which was very annoying the day she called me, she told me that she wanted to give it more corporateness, that everything is like super to the lot and what do i know
RAUL TORREALBA: She wants to handle it herself.
FELIPE: Yes, cachái?, the first session that there was, well first they had called me so that I might present my resignation, because that is the modus operandi, that she was going to return to me later.
RAUL TORREALBA: I didn’t even feel it, you’re here for me personally, I didn’t depend on anyone, Felipe.
FELIPE: Well, there was no resignation from anyone, and that day, she put and removed, what is the name of this rooster?, she dismissed the general director, I don’t know what his name is.
RAUL TORREALBA: Ignacio Rodriguez.
FELIPE: That and he put Juanita Mir, there was a good decision.
RAUL TORREALBA: I love Juanita, she’s my friend, dude, but.
FELIPE: Yes, but regardless of how charming Juanita is and how good or bad Rodríguez is, she made him see it there (indecipherable), it’s not the way, because basically, let’s see, we were asked to We approved the table and when the table was approved, we then approved your change request, the change of Rodríguez.
RAUL TORREALBA: I might not lose you a hue… like Rodríguez, with the heritage he has.
FELIPE: Yes po’.
RAUL TORREALBA: Yeah, hey, talk to Mario. Mario called me, I have spoken with Cote, I have spoken with Varela, Varela spoke with Agustín, with Cata, and no one is very in agreement with the hue… It’s just that what happens, let’s see, I am very pro Evópoli, but they are trying to use Vitacura as Evópoli’s political secretariat, so now I don’t know if it’s good po’.
FELIPE: Did you think that’s it?
RAUL TORREALBA: I don’t know hue…, but what did I want, let’s see, Felipito, I’m shitty, I’m here in the south, they took my chu… for free, one hue… he said they gave me some envelopes with silver, I tell you all the renditions of Vitacura are, well, you have seen them in the directory, yes they are all. But I have to hide, because here first the press kills you, then it guts you.
FELIPE: That’s why I’m asking you, of course.
RAUL TORREALBA: And then when at the end they say no, this hue… it wasn’t bad, it was really good, but they put the caluga on the last page, I’m in that hu… po’ hue…, they screwed me , but don’t shit on you and don’t shit on the institutions, if the cultural corporation of Vitacura is true that the last five, six months it was weak, but due to a series of extra problems from the council, a series of hue…, but don’t change the statutes for that hu…, let Juanita get her act together and work, it’s just that it seems super good to me and I think Juanita can do it really well.
FELIPE: Well, I’m going to talk to Mario.
RAUL TORREALBA: Call Mario, Felipe, and I’ll send you a big hug.
FELIPE: Yeah, thanks for calling me and good.
RAUL TORREALBA: Now, when you, when you’re bored in Santiago with 30 degrees of heat, I’m here in Colico, which is raining heavily.
FELIPE: What a delicious smell…
RAUL TORREALBA: Yeah, I’m a hippie here huh… Nowadays I’m the young one and you’re the old one.
FELIPE: Now, when I’m in the area I’ll let you know so I can go see you.
Although at first Torrealba’s conversations were fluid with his interlocutors, in the PDI the care he took to address specific situations of the investigation in detail drew attention. This is stated in the report on the interceptions and that they send to the prosecution: “The defendants were aware of the intervention and registration of their respective communications, which circumstance had a negative impact on the result of this investigative delivery, since the aforementioned maintained take special care when exchanging information by telephone”.
For example, the PDI alerted the Public Ministry of two situations that revealed that the “Trunk” was aware of the interventions: “It is recorded in the conversation held between Torrealba and his son Raúl Fernando Torrealba Simonetti dated October 8, 2021.” and where the former community chief tells him: “Easier here, because you don’t have good Internet and we are not going to talk regarding any hue…”.
In the same vein, there is another conversation on September 21, 2021 with a person identified as “Gonza”.
GONZA: Hey, did they give you permission to use this phone?
RAUL TORREALBA: To talk regarding nonsense, yes, I don’t talk regarding anything that has to do with the cause.
The man who was mayor of Vitacura for 24 years was so aware that he was being followed by the police that he even had a conversation with his son Raúl Fernando in which he realized that messages had been deleted from his WhatsApp. The communication between the two occurred on September 27, 2021, at 2:55 p.m.
After greeting each other and talking regarding the communications consultancies that Torrealba is looking for, his son tells him:
RAÚL FERNANDO: Yesterday, how was reading all your WhatsApp messages, which were 1,500 messages?
RAUL TORREALBA: Put…, we delete them, we delete them all, we’re out of the story now, we go to bed early and sleep peacefully.
RAÚL FERNANDO: Perfect, it was better, I was worried that you might get anxious, because it’s a subject that’s just as tempting, po’.
RAUL TORREALBA: No, they’re all deleted now, so bye.
