translated from Spanish: Prosecutor’s Office requests a formalization hearing against 6 Enap executives for contamination in Quintero and Talcahuano

Six executives of the National Petroleum Company (ENAP) will be formalized for environmental crimes, for their responsibility – according to the Public Prosecutor’s Office – for the pollution episodes in Quinte Puchuncaví last year, as well as the evacuation of a clinic and shopping center in Talcahuano commune, Bíobío Region.
The Public Prosecutor’s Office this afternoon brought a request for formalization to the Talcahuano Guarantee Court against the six executives of the Hualpén and Quintero refineries. A seventh person was also charged with a service provider.
Specifically, the Public Prosecutor’s Office detailed that the executives to be formalized are: Edmundo Piraíno Suez, manager of ENAP Refinerías Aconcagua; Alvaro Hillerns Velasco, manager of ENAP Refinerías Bío Bío; Patricia Cabalá Leiva, head of ENAP’s Operations Department; Juan Pablo Rhodes Valenzuela, head of the Quintero Maritime Terminal, ENAP Refinerías Aconcagua; Jorge Farías Fuentes, head of the Maritime Area of ENAP Refinerías Bío Bío; Carlos Lizana Guerrero, head of the Land Area of the Quintero Maritime Terminal, ENAP Refineries Aconcagua.
The other defendant is Joseph Darlington Flores, captain of the merchant navy, who was in an Enap service provider.
The Public Prosecutor’s Office determined, after a year of research, that Enap is responsible for the evacuation in Talcahuano of Mall Plaza El Trébol and the Bío Bío Clinic, for an odor from the transfer of Iranian Heavy-type crude oil.
Subsequently, this shipment reached the communes of Quintero and Puchuncaví, generating the massive poisonings that began in August of last year.
The inquests are being carried out by the regional prosecutor of the Bíobío, Marcela Cartagena.
In addition, the inability of the Quintero Court was requested, considering that the crime charged had its commencement in the commune of Talcahuano, where the 180 thousand cubic meters of Iranian crude arrived.
In addition, Cartagena commented that they will formalize considering the crime defined in the 291 of the Penal Code. “It assumes as the verb of the guiding verb the spread of substances that are defined in the code and that generally have the merit or demerit of endangering the health of living beings,” he said.
The lawyer Remberto Valdés, a plainr in the case representing more than 1,000 residents of Quintero and Puchuncaví, who on 29 July had called for the formalization that was granted today, expressed satisfaction with the resolution and said that it does not rule out going up in the ENAP executive line, asking the Public Prosecutor’s Office to do so with executives from the first hierarchical level of the Chilean State oil company.
In this sense, Valdés challenged the BOARD of ENAP to “go down from the heights to the plain” and recognize the responsibility of the state company, paving the way to compensate the people who were victims of the toxic cloud of August 2018. He argued that with this decision of the Public Prosecutor’s Office “there is an irredeemable legal basis” that should compel them to repair the damage caused to their representatives who, he said, “cannot continue to wait.”
Enap issued a statement reiterating their conviction that their processes were carried out correctly and that they have no responsibility in the Talcahuano and Quintero episodes. “We have full confidence that this will be credited to the investigation.”
In parallel, the Deputy Prosecutor of the Biobío, Ana María Aldana, instructed the IDP to attend to the Superintendency of the Environment to obtain a copy of the report that the superintendency commissioned to the Dictuc of the Catholic University, on the occasion of the massive poisonings in Quintero and Puchuncaví, and which has kept secret to this day.

Original source in Spanish