The defense of the former senator and former president of the UDI, Pablo Longueira, requested the acquittal of the crimes that are imputed to the also former Minister of Economy in the first government of Sebastián Piñera, during this day of opening arguments of the oral trial for bribery and tax crimes in the so-called “SQM case”, before the Third Court of Oral Criminal Trial of Santiago.
The lawyer Joanna Heskia defined the day as “sweet and agraz”, because, after years and “so many violations of the rights of our represented”, the trial begins in which she assures they will be able to “demonstrate publicly and before an impartial court the total innocence of Mr. Longueira”.
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The oral trial against some of those involved in the case of illegal financing of politics by the mining company SQM, began after eight years of investigation. The Public Ministry has filed charges of bribery, bribery and tax crimes against eight defendants, including Longueira, his secretary, former presidential candidate Marco Enríquez-Ominami, and the former general manager of SQM, Patricio Contesse.
In the opinion of Pablo Longueira’s defense, the accusers “have built against me an artificial cause, based on incomplete, decontextualized facts, accusing him of conduct that does not constitute any crime.” Lawyer Joanna Heskia said that the behaviors attributed to the former parliamentarian, in the accusations of the SII and the Public Ministry, present “serious formal and substantive defects that will make it impossible to issue a conviction.”
In addition, according to Longueira’s defense, the figure of bribery/bribery that is imputed to him, presents “technical and interpretative shortcomings.”
It is worth mentioning that the State Defense Council (CDE) previously exposed to the court the existence of an “illicit pact” between Longueira and Contesse, describing their relationship as “corruptive.”
Regarding the position of the CDE and the behaviors imputed, the defense lawyer assured that they will demonstrate “the real context” in which they were developed, which, in her opinion, “are far from being constitutive of this ‘illicit pact'”.
Thus, giving an account of what they consider to be “serious affectations” in the constitutional guarantees of his client, the defense affirms that Pablo Longueira “does not appear or falsely pretend to be a victim of this case, as the CDE pointed out, but has effectively been the object of a relentless, partial, directed and illegitimate persecution against him.”
The accusations against Longueira, according to the accusers, “describe acts that, both in his capacity as senator in 2010 and then as Minister of Economy in 2011, would have been carried out in exchange for or motivated by economic benefits, requested or accepted to receive from the SQM company for the Chile Justo and Fundación Web foundations. as well as for its own activity or that of its political party, the UDI. The latter, through the issuance of 23 ideologically false ballots.”
“These facts are completely false,” the defense alleges, along with stating that the former senator “never requested or accepted to receive from SQM or its representatives, including Patricio Contesse, any economic benefit, neither for himself nor for the UDI, nor for the Web and Chile Justo foundations.” Moreover, not only that, “we will also be able to demonstrate that all the acts of Mr. Pablo Longueira included in the accusations, were motivated exclusively by the general interest of the country, respect for the Constitution and his political convictions,” he adds.
“We will be able to demonstrate that he never benefited financially, that no peso from SQM went to his accounts, those of his family or those of the UDI. Moreover, we will demonstrate that Mr. Longueira, in his political life, imposed very high standards of probity on himself.”
The defense emphasizes: Pablo Longueira, “did not receive money from private parties, ever, when he held public office, despite that he has been dragged into a nightmare of unfounded accusations for a decade.”
The lawyer Joanna Heskia was emphatic in pointing out that the case against her client is an “artificial construction”, which tries to constitute a crime where it does not exist, making a “whimsical” interpretation of the facts.
“By far, the accusations presented fail to meet the standards of the typical requirements of the crime of bribery,” closed the criminal lawyer.
Defense of Roberto León Araya
During the same day of Allegations before the Third Court of Oral Criminal Trial of Santiago, also exposed the lawyer Marcelo Torres, in defense of the agronomist Roberto León Araya, son of the former DC deputy Roberto León Ramírez, who risks four years in prison accused of facilitating missing ballots.
León Araya was formalized on August 31 for issuing 63 fee slips to SQM between 2009 and 2014 for $ 157 million, without having provided real services, according to the Internal Revenue Service (SII), which caused a tax loss of $ 56.6 million.
For the defense of Roberto León Araya, it is incorrect in this case to attribute to his client the term “ideologically false ballots”, since, as he argued before the court, “ideological falsehood in a ‘private document’ is not punishable, except exceptionally when the legal regulations impose, in certain terms, the obligation to be truthful with respect to certain facts or circumstances. ” In this, based on the jurisprudence of the Supreme Court and the doctrine at the national level, according to the defense lawyer, there would be no malice either.
The lawyer Marcelo Torres ruled out both direct fraud and eventual fraud, since if the conduct was carried out with eventual fraud it would be an “atypical” case and therefore “it is not punishable because it does not constitute a crime.”
“In this case it will not be proven that my client has acted with direct intent because he did not act with the purpose of SQM or any representative committing a crime,” he concluded.
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