After six days of marathon formalization hearings, the Guarantee Court of the city of Coronel (530 km south of Santiago, BioBío region), this Monday decreed the precautionary measure of night house arrest for your mayor, Boris Chamorro (PS), who is accused of crimes of bribery, bribery, unfair administration and tax crimes.
“I will continue directing the destinies of our city,” Chamorro said exultantly as he left the court, since he has permission to circulate freely between 6:00 a.m. and 10:00 p.m.
The decision was not without controversy and recalled the case of the recently re-elected mayor of the city of Victoria (615 km south of Santiago, Araucanía Region), Javier Jaramillowho obtained at the beginning of this month a two hour permit from a local court in order to attend the ceremony in which he once again sat in the building chair of that communedespite being with house arrest after being formalized for the crimes of rape and sexual abuse against two officials of their municipality.
Chamorro -reelected at the end of October for the third time with more than 52,8% of the votes – thus managed to escape the preventive detention requested by the Prosecutor’s Office, which charges him with the alleged receipt “on a constant and monthly basis”, of $82 million pesos (USD 83 thousand) in 21 payments from the company Puerto Coronel.
The Public Ministry accuses him of 21 crimes, 18 of which would have been committed under the new Economic Crimes Law. This, together with the fact of being a civil servant, aggravates the penalty to which he could be sentenced if found guilty, which rises above the 10 years and one day.
The case is in the hands of Glenda LagosCoronel’s deputy prosecutor and has three edges: the payment of bribes to communal authorities and union leaders (four of whom have not yet been formalized); the collaboration of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that provided ideologically false invoices; and the role they played executives of the Puerto Coronel company in these crimes.
The other six people charged in this investigation are the former councilor Eduardo Araya (PS); the businessmen Víctor Olivares and Hernán Romero (who is the brother of the deputy Leonidas Romero) and the former executives of Puerto Coronel Eduardo Hartwig, Daniel Chamorro and Javier Anwandter.
The court also rejected preventive detention for all of them but left all of them under house arrest except Romero, Araya and Anwandter, who were left without precautionary measures.
A crowd of adherents waited for Chamorro at the exit of the court, where in an improvised press point he pointed out that the night arrest decreed “is the product, mainly, of statements by two people who are linked to the process (which) will allow them to be given peace of mind to my parents, to my family, who has been suffering a lot, and, above all, “give peace of mind to the people of Coronel that, despite what many said, I will continue with the same strength and, above all, with the sovereign support of the people, directing the destinies of our city,” as stated Cooperative.
The Public Ministry has already reported that they are studying the decision and have not ruled out appealing. For its part, the Court decreed a three-month period for investigation.
