translated from Spanish: Institutional crisis: Army would have intercepted calls from military people who reported corruption

According to Radio Bío Bío, one of the uniformed whose conversations were recorded and transcribed is the army captain, Rafael Harvey, whose discharge has not yet been signed by President Sebastián Piñera. Harvey was prosecuted and arrested for the crime of sedition, as part of the investigation that undertook the Military Prosecutor’s Office that sentenced him to five years in prison. However, the Court of Martial, last June 12, overturned the ruling and found it not guilty. According to the information of the radio, in charge of carrying out the telephone intervention was the Directorate of Intelligence of the Army (DINE), during the administration of the former commander-in-chief Humberto Oviedo Oviedo, now investigated for corruption. According to Bío Bío, the Army requested authorization from a minister of the Santiago Court of Appeals who resolved the petition based on the Intelligence Act. To obtain judicial leave and carry out these intrusive tasks, the Army would have argued that uniforms could be handing over information affecting the institution and national security or in the worst military case. Institutional sources consulted by the radio confirmed the telephone interventions. It was indicated that the work adhered to legality and that the magistrate who saw the procedure was always aware of which military was heard and why. Different sources inquired by Bío Bío radio, indicated that there are a series of transcriptions of the audios, those that are in documents without institutional letterhead or signature, but whose content belongs to what obtained military intelligence. The papers would not reveal problems for the national or operational security of the Army, but information on how investigations conducted by corruption into law. Among them would highlight the case of fraud in the Army, today by the visiting minister Rommy Rutherford. The latter found that 6 billion pesos were literally stolen from the funds of the then Reserved Copper Act. On another edge of this latest inquest, known as “tourism agencies”, Rutherford prosecuted the former commander-in-chief of the Army, General Retirement Oviedo for the embezzlement of 4.5 billion pesos. That is to say the same under whose command those who reported crimes against probity were heard “legally”. This medium requested a version from the Army, but it was indicated that the regulatory framework of the Intelligence Act establishes the “obligation to keep secret”. In addition, this situation would have been warned to the government, in particular the Minister of Defense, Alberto Espina.

Original source in Spanish