It was one of the most precious jewels of Lucia Hiriart (89) and that, for the same reason, he jealously guarded until the day of his death. For special occasions, the widow of Augusto Pinochet brought out a gemstone ring that had a diamond. Suffering from multiple diseases, the ring has become, in recent years, one of the valuable objects of her inheritance.
After his death, on December 16, 2021, no one remembered the jewel. That until a month later, in January of this year, his son Marco Antonio Pinochet (64) She was struck by the fact that they did not find her in the room that her mother lived in during the last years of her life.
“The diamond ring is missing”he said annoyed to Silvia Jara Oliver (55), who had been Hiriart’s nurse for a decade. In that minute she felt that behind her reprimand the suspicion that she had some kind of responsibility in the disappearance of the jewel was hidden. She replied immediately: “Mrs. Lucia gave it to Mrs. Jacqueline.” This in allusion to the youngest daughter of the Pinochet Hiriart. Marco Antonio called his sister to verify that the version was true. So it was.
This was one of the many disagreements between the nurse and Hiriart’s son, who was appointed by the family to coordinate the care of the founder of the late Cema Chile. The episode is described in a lawsuit filed by the health professional, on May 3, and that is directed against the children of Pinochet. There he accuses mistreatment and debts.
In the libel, to which he agreed Third, another tense passage is described that depicts the relationship between the caregiver and her employer. On January 24 of this year they demanded that she sign a confidentiality agreement before giving rise to the payment of her settlement. However, there was no agreement. “We understand each other with lawyers,” Marco Antonio warned. And so it happened.
In the judicial arena, Jara accuses the Pinochet-Hiriart family of seriously affecting their “physical and mental integrity”. Along with this, he says that their fundamental rights were violated, after the employment relationship they had was unknown, by not agreeing to the payment of compensation and by not paying their contributions.
On January 12, 2012, Silvia Jara began to work for Lucía Hiriart, agreeing to a monthly net salary of $500,000. The following year, her salary increased by $100,000. Her function was to assist her with her hygiene, comb her hair, dress her, feed her, give her medicine and accompany her.
According to the legal action, the working day that was imposed on him was in shifts of 48 and 72 hours. In the plaintiff’s view, this was “totally abusive”. He describes that she she arrived on Tuesdays at 9 in the morning and left on Thursday, after which she was relieved by another caregiver.
Since then, he accuses, a complex relationship began, which was triggered mainly when he asked to buy cleaning products for Pinochet’s widow. “Don Marco Antonio was always furious, pointing out that he did not understand the reason for so much spending”, maintains the professional in the lawsuit. Along with this, it exemplifies that on one occasion the son of the former commander in chief of the Army opposed the purchase of sterile surgical gloves and that he had warned her and the other caregiver that they should wash them to reuse them and thus not have to invest so much money on it.
“We emphasize that the gloves were used to clean Mrs. Hiriart, which is why it is humiliating and extremely poor to ask her caregivers to wash them to save money”the document reads.
Jara says that later, in 2020, when Covid-19 arrived and the entire country began preventive quarantines, the confinement and the pandemic caused the conflicts to intensify and escalate. The latter because, in addition to doing her job with Hiriart, she also had to take care of her husband, who was sick at her house.
Due to mobility restrictions and contagion risks, the Pinochet family asked her to no longer work in 72-hour shifts, but to stay a full week and alternate that system with the other caregiver. In the first instance, she says, her family car was arranged to pick her up and drop her off, but the measure did not last long. “This was fulfilled once or twice at most, for Mr. Marco Antonio forbade the nurses to be transferred, ‘because the car was going to wear out or could be spoiled‘”, is related in the legal action.
Finally, explains Jara, they changed the modality: they had to work indoors for a month and “they were prohibited from leaving the place and visiting their families.” The climate was almost unsustainable, she refers to the professional, above all because of her own family situation, due to the suffering of her spouse. It was there that She decided to talk to Marco Antonio Pinochet and ask him to fire her, agreeing on a compensation amount of $6.9 million. The latter, according to the nurse’s version, offered him half and, as a kind of counteroffer, granted him a raise of $50,000 until his mother died.
From what is described in the lawsuit, the main nodes of this employment relationship were marked by mistrust. The woman accuses that on more than one occasion she was treated as disloyal and the suspicion was installed that she was stealing from Lucía Hiriart their belongings.
Added to the episode of the jewel is another fact that the plaintiff qualifies in the framework of “mistreatment, humiliation, offenses and grievances” of which she would have been a victim. This is how Jara’s lawyer points out in the document: “On April 2, 2020, Mr. Marco Antonio Pinochet accused my client of ‘hiding information from him and being a thief'”. This would have happened, according to the nurse, because the other caregiver had found an envelope with cash that was hidden.
When Marco Antonio Pinochet found out about this situation, according to the legal action, he was furious and went to Silvia Jara to ask her for an explanation. “He accused her of stealing from her mother, of being shameless and disloyal,” is held in the document. The woman says that she replied that this money corresponded to savings that Hiriart kept in her room. “The defendant replied by shouting that it was not possible for them to hide any information from him, except for that type,” the legal action says. All this, according to the nurse, occurred in broad daylight, on public roads, outside the residence of one of the Pinochet’s granddaughters.
What was the origin of that money? They do not make it explicit in the lawsuit, what is detailed is that every week Hiriart received $200,000 and that he saved “hiddenly” from his family. “We don’t know why,” says the health professional, referring to the old woman’s behavior. She added that she kept at least $150,000 of that money. The former president of Cema Chile, according to what is read in the libel, would have told her nurse that she was saving because “she wanted to give her granddaughter Sofía a nice wedding gift.”
The employment relationship between Jara and Pinochet’s children finally ended in January of this year, amid the obligation to sign a confidentiality clause. If he broke the agreement, a fine of UF 2,000 ($ 65.5 million) would be applied.. But she did not accept and decided to follow the legal path.
In the lawsuit, a total payment of $59.3 million is requested, for payments owed and moral damages. The parties have already been notified and a hearing has been scheduled for June 14, which will mark the return of the Pinochet family to the courts of justice.