Chilean President Impeached over Pandora Papers Disclosures
Sebastián Piñera has been president of Chile since 2018 (Wikimedia Commons).
The Chamber of Deputies in the National Congress of Chile impeached Chilean President Sebastián Piñera on November 9. The Pandora Papers had revealed Piñera’s involvement in various family business deals throughout the past several decades.
The Pandora Papers were published on October 3 by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), a U.S.-based nonprofit consisting of 280 investigative reporters across more than 100 countries and territories. The information exposed in the Pandora Papers about the financial practices of global figures surpasses that of the Panama Papers, their prior Pulitzer Prize-winning leak of 2017.
The Pandora Papers do not include any information on powerful individuals from the United States, despite the massive domestic tax havens in Nevada and South Dakota, leading to accusations that the Pandora Papers are a form of controlled information dumping. Nonetheless, the ICIJ’s release of more than 11.9 million records illuminates many world leaders’ money-shoring in international tax havens, including the British Virgin Islands, Seychelles, Hong Kong, Belize, Panama, and South Dakota, from the 1970s to 2020. The Pandora Papers include exposés of more than 330 individual politicians across 90 different countries and territories. 35 individuals are former or current world leaders, one of which is Piñera.
According to the Pandora Paper leaks, Piñera, who is worth about $2.8 billion, invested in various offshore deals during his early presidency. From 2010 to 2011, the Chilean Dominga mining company, in which Piñera’s children owned a 33.3 percent stake, sold shares under the condition that no interruptions would interfere with plans for a mining project. In August 2011, Piñera refused to place any environmental protections on land nearby the proposed mining project. Due to the secrecy of the controversy, definitive details about any corrupt connection between the mining company’s shares and Piñera remain unclear. However, Piñera’s children used offshore companies to distribute family-owned shares despite Piñera’s prior electoral promise to halt his family’s asset management during his presidency.
Following the public revelations within these documents in early October, opposition congressional leaders brought up accusations against Piñera and quickly launched impeachment proceedings. 78 members out of the 155-member lower-house voted for impeachment, the bare minimum requirement of votes. 67 members voted against impeachment while the other 10 either abstained or were absent.
An upcoming trial is now expected in the Senate, the 43-member upper house of Chile’s Congress. The senatorial trial would also take place during Chile’s first round of general elections on November 21, intensifying pressure amidst a notably contentious period of Chilean politics. For example, two years ago, the Chilean Senate censured former Interior Minister Andres Chadwick for his failure to prevent human rights abuses during the massive anti-neoliberal protests across the country in 2019 and into 2020. Around the same time, Piñera narrowly avoided similar indictments over his protest handling. However, Piñera’s removal from office is unlikely; only 24 out of a necessary 29 members support the measure.