“All roads lead to Chadwick.” The phrase, launched by the socialist deputy Daniel Manouchehriwas burned into the Chilean public opinion and was finally fulfilled last Monday the 18th., when whoever was Minister of the Interior and strong man of the two governments of Sebastian Piñera -who was also his cousin-, declared for almost three hours as accused on the edge Patio Group of the Audio Case, the plot of influences that was uncovered by his now former best friend, the influential lawyer Luis Hermosilla, that splashed Supreme Court ministers, prosecutors, businessmen and a good part of the Chilean right.
Under the guidance of Chadwick, Hermosilla became the most powerful of the Piñera governments. Today he is in preventive detention in the Captain Yáber prison annex – the prison for criminals of “collar and tie”-, accused of repeated bribery, money laundering and tax crimesand the siege is now closing on the former militant of the Independent Democratic Union (UDI), the man who, in February of this year, after the tragic death of Piñera When he covered the helicopter he was piloting over Lake Ranco, he was called to achieve the goal. longed for broad pact on the Chilean right, in the style of the extinct leftist Concertación.
Eight months later, the figure of the former right-wing factotum had vanished.
The Chadwick debacle began in mid-September, when he had to give up in his position as president of the board of directors of the San Sebastian Universitywhich he had arrived after being disqualified in a political trial to hold public office for five years, for his responsibility in managing the social outbreak in 2019.
According to him, his resignation was to address the complaint he filed against ten pro-government parliamentarians for involving him, precisely, in the Audios Case, in his political trials against two ministers of the Supreme Court. In these accusations, his name almost always appeared only with his initials ‘ACH’, mentioned in collusions of Luis Hermosilla with the judges of the Supreme Court, Jean Pierre Matus and Angela Vivancowhich ultimately cost the latter her position.
“They seek, without a doubt, cancel my person in the public sphere”, he said on that occasion through a press release.
However, his departure was also due to a note from The Counter which revealed that Marcela Cubillosformer Minister of Education under Piñera who finally lost the election for mayor of the desired Santiago commune of Las Condes, worked as an academic at the San Sebastián University during four years the exorbitant salary of $17 million – more than USD 17 thousand per month –even spending long periods in Spain, where her husband resides.
a salary 21% higher than what they pay at Harvard.
Due to this, the entity was accused of being paying box on the right -but especially from the UDI-, with public moneysince although said house of studies is a private institution, 45.5% of its income last year came from state resources such as scholarships, the State Endorsed Credit (CAE) and funds to which Any university can apply.
To make matters worse, according to the report that uncovered the news, around 30 people linked to the right who held positions in the Piñera r governmentsthey landed in the USSonce his work in the government has ended. Many of them also appear in the negotiations of the lawyer Hermosilla, in which Chadwick is also profusely named.
Before the edge is revealed “USS”, Sebastián Piñera’s former Minister of National Assets had already resigned from the university, Felipe Ward – also accused of his alleged participation in the “Grupo Patio” group -, and the former Eastern Metropolitan Regional Prosecutor, Manuel Guerraa law professor, after his relationship with Hermosilla became known and that he had asked Chadwick for a job at said university, which he had denied.
In October, and not without some relief from his party and the entire center-right – but not the Republicans, who took the stage -, Chadwick He resigned from the UDI. One day before resigning from the community in which she served for 38 years, the Eastern Metropolitan Prosecutor Lorena Parra declared that “Mr. Chadwick is certainly going to be summoned (…), it should be in his capacity as accused. It is a reserved edge”, fact that finally came to fruition this Monday.
Andrés Chadwick gave a statement before the chief prosecutor of High Complexity of the Eastern Prosecutor’s Office, Miguel Angel Orellanafor more than three hours, and he did so accompanied by his lawyer, Samuel Donososince it was already clear that it would be as an accused and not a mere witness.
On this occasion, according to an Ex-Ante note, the pursuer’s investigations pointed to the $190 million -in 17 deposits-, which Luis Hermosilla deposited with him between March 2020 and March 2023 while both shared an office or “roof community”, but mainly to his role in the so-called edge “Patio Group”, in which the efforts made by Hermosilla to speed up construction permit approval for an industrial subdivision of the holding company of that same name, owned by the Jalaff brothers.
Hermosilla was the ‘consigliere’ of Alvaro Jalaff and together with Chadwick they had a WhatsApp group called “Friends”. In a 2018 conversation, Hermosilla tells Jalaff: “You have to treasure your friendship with ACH. That guy is going to be president. Take care of an immense asset.” And the following year he wrote to him: “You and ACH are my only brothers.”
When Felipe Ward assumed as Minister of Housing and Urban Planning (Minvu), Hermosilla wrote to Jalaff that the new minister was “close friend of ACH”, according to a report by The Counter. “He is much closer and admires us,” he added.
Hermosilla and Francisco Feres -the Jalaffs’ lawyer-, then began to take steps to unblock a Grupo Patio project called Parque Capital, in Minvu, in August 2020. In these conversations, Feres proposed to Hermosilla that Chadwick act as a “minister of faith” in the negotiations with Minister Ward and the metropolitan seremi, Manuel José Errázuriz.
Errázuriz confirmed that he received direct pressures from Minister Ward. “No one told me to do something that was not appropriate, but rather ‘hurry up, can you please get the answer quickly,’” stated Errázuriz.
Finally, permits whose approval takes up to two years were processed in two and a half months and the real estate project, in addition, was won USD 39 million thanks to a program from the Piñera Government to revitalize the ailing post-pandemic economy.
After the article was published, Minvu ordered a summary and the Prosecutor’s Office opened an investigation into this new aspect of the ‘Audios Case’, in which the first victim was Felipe Ward, who had to resign from the vice chancellorship from the San Sebastián University, Santiago campus.
However, it is most likely that Andrés Chadwick will also have to answer other inquiries, such as the call he made to Augusto Iglesias, counselor of the Commission for the Financial Market (CMF) and undersecretary of Social Security during the first Piñera government, to intercede on behalf of the corridor of the Sauer brotherssuspended by said organization in March 2023 in the so-called ‘Factop’ case, a financial bicycle from which the Jalaff are pointed out as the main beneficiaries and in which Ariel and Daniel Sauerhis father, Albertoand the lawyer Dario Cuadraare accused of facilitating fake tax invoices for some $13,000 million (just over USD 13 million).
Luis Hermosilla was also the ‘consigliere’ of the Sauers and it was precisely a conversation between Ariel Sauer, Luis Hermosilla and his collaborator, the lawyer Leonardo Villalobosin which they talked about putting together a box with money for bribes – and that it was recorded by her and later given to Sauer’s former partner, Rodrigo Topelberg -, which uncovered the “Audios Case” and its subsequent aspects.
In a statement, Chadwick already said that “inquiries about administrative procedures are not subject to the Lobby Law”, and that on the date he made the call “as is public knowledge, I was not exercising any public office.”
You must also answer whether or not you met with Álvaro Jalaff in mid-2017, to receive from him $150 million (USD 166 thousand)destined for the campaign that would bring Piñera to the presidential seat for the second time.
On August 17 of that year, Jalaff had told Hermosilla that he had an “important” topic to talk to him about, that he had met with other business friends – Maurice (Khamis), José Said and Alberto Kassis – and “We are going to spend 150, but I want to spend them directly.”
“Be careful with WhatsApp”, The lawyer warned him on that occasion, for the first time. The next day he told him to go “to his office at Apoquindo 3300, 18th floor,” at around 11″.
Although poorly written, the address corresponds to the historic headquarters of Sebastián Piñera and there, it is assumed, he was supposed to meet Chadwick. As revealed The Counter, everything indicates that Álvaro Jalaff attended the meetingbecause in the chat he says he is “in a shithole” and even asks Hermosilla about parking.
The investigation will tell if those monies were delivered or not.
Finally, Chadwick will surely be consulted about the negotiations that the minister made Jean Pierre Matus with a German specialist lawyer called Kai Ambos, who advised on the defense of the impeachment trial that ended up ousting him from the second Pîñera Government, after the social outbreak of 2019, and in which Hermosilla was his defense lawyer.
Matus, who is accused in another aspect of the Audio Case for his links with Luis Hermosilla, after a complaint filed by the deputy Camila Musante (Ind), received $14 million (USD 15,000) for that work and in the formalization of Hermosilla, the Prosecutor’s Office revealed that the Funds to pay the German lawyer came from none other than the Sauer brothers’ accounts.
