translated from Spanish: Longueira: Until 2003 “all Chilean politicians were corrupt”

The former presidential presidential candidate, Pablo Longueira, said on Tuesday during his statement as a witness of Jaime Orpis – in the context of the Corpesca case – that it could be said that until 2003 all Chilean politicians were corrupt, for how financed their campaigns.” Until 2003 all these funds were obtained by ballots, presidential campaigns, parliamentary campaigns until 2003 were fully funded with what are now called ideologically false ballots. We could say, that, until that year, all Chilean politicians were corrupt, because that was the reality and I faced it,” he said. He also said that “in the agreement with President (Ricardo) Lagos, one of the conditions that we put for the agreement was to create the public leadership and the financing of politics. That’s where legislation was first created, unfortunately we didn’t get it right. It’s important for someone to say that because they’re all so cowardly, we all deny reality. They all had the same practice, unfortunately the legal funding was established 60 days before the election, and that was the big mistake.” He also spoke of when he decided to be a presidential candidate and stressed that “I fortunately accepted that candidacy the same day that the funding split, because it was 60 days. But if you look back, all the political sectors, the President (Michelle) Bachelet, the President (Sebastian) Piñera, (Andrés) Allamand, Laurence Golborne, Andrés Velasco, all the presidential candidates had been deployed for months, and where did Financing? Here they are hypocrites, this is a country of hypocrites. Everyone knew how they were funded (the campaigns) and asked for the old-fashioned resources.” It should be remembered that the former Minister of Economy reappeared on Tuesday to testify as a witness of former Senator Orpis, reaching the Third Oral Court in Lo Penal de Santiago to testify in the case against the former parliamentarian, formalized for fraud tax, tax fraud, tax fraud and bribery. The oral trial against Orpis began last year, in which he is charged with tax fraud, bribery and tax offences by more than 230 million pesos, which would have contributed the fishing company to his campaigns. Specifically, Longueira said that “it is much better not to be here, I interrupted my vacation and I will take a displeasure with the press. But I feel a duty to bear witness to an exceptional guy, who has had a terrible time, who has done wrong things, but I know that something has not done and is the bribery.”

Original source in Spanish