Businessman Luis Enrique Yarur Rey, controller of Banco de Crédito e Inversiones (BCI), suffered a real setback in court, since his attempt to avoid being a witness in the investigation of the SQM case was denied.
The story begins like this: at the end of November 2022, the 3rd Court of Oral Criminal Trial of Santiago notified the businessman of his quality as a witness, being summoned to testify on January 12, 2023. Yarur Rey was offered as a witness by the defense of Patricio Contesse González, who is accused, as General Manager of the company SQM S.A. and for having held other positions in related companies, for the commission of tax crimes and bribery.
For this reason, the defense of Yarur, commanded by the lawyer Matías Balmaceda – of Balmaceda, Cox and Piña Abogados – requested the same court “to release my client from the legal obligation to attend to testify at the aforementioned oral trial, declaring that there is just cause to exonerate him”, as stated in the request that you can read in the following link.
The arguments of Yarur Rey’s defense are based on the fact that, first, “it constitutes an unofficial statement that could seriously damage the honor and prestige of the company he represents, without the evidence itself having any relevance to the facts for which Mr. Contesse is accused.” This is because Contesse is associated with ideologically false ballots issued by SQM S.A., SQM Salar S.A. and SQM Industrial S.A., and Yarur is cited “in his capacity as controller” of the BCI, as his lawyer says.
“Thus, it is not understood how it could affect the accused both in terms of acquittal and conviction (and penalty), an administrative procedure with respect to a different company and the way in which the administration of that company approached and resolved it,” the request says.
Second, Contesse’s defense requested Yarov’s statement due to “the administrative procedure followed by the Internal Revenue Service (SII)” against BCI. In the opinion of lawyer Balmaceda, with this he seeks to “compare different responsibilities – since the BCI procedure referred to was of an administrative nature – between different companies, forgetting that this is alien to criminal law that is of individual responsibilities”, in addition to clarifying that said procedure is already closed and resolved.
Finally, thirdly, Yaur’s defense points out that the summons “is contrary to the proportionality that must prevail in any judicial decision, in terms of the fact that the damage that the summons in question can cause to my client and BCI, is not compensated in any way with the role that he can play as a witness.” To justify this point, the lawyer mentions that Contesse, at the time of requesting the participation of Yarur as a witness in his investigation, shared a news published by El Mostrador in 2020, entitled “Operation Impunity: the fines paid by the Angelini, Said, Yarur and Saieh groups to get rid of crimes for political money”, with which he sought to “raise in the oral trial a wrong and sensationalist position that would consider that ‘the Yarur group’ would have ‘ Escapado of crimes,'” Balmaceda says.
However, on December 29, Luis Enrique Yarur Rey had a bad end to the year, since the same court rejected this request “as inadmissible”, as stated in the resolution signed by Paulina Rosales González, Titular Judge of the Third Court of Oral Trial in Criminal Matters of Santiago.
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