Corruption in Chile
[4] In December 2005 the mayor of Quillota, Luis Mella (Christian Democrat), alleged the government's Job-Making Program (PGE) paid political allies for work that was not performed.
The PGE investigations revealed that individuals paid to do public works actually spent their time campaigning for political parties.
[5] In October a government audit revealed financial irregularities in Chiledeportes, a national program to promote amateur and professional sport activities.
"[5] The government removed all 13 Chiledeportes regional directors and initiated a broad-based investigation to determine the extent and nature of potential fraud or mismanagement.
Congress created an investigative committee in February, and prosecutors brought charges of tax evasion and falsification of documents against some individuals.
In October 2006, it was discovered that 90% of the projects of Chiledeportes, the government's sports organization, had some sort of anomaly: either initiatives that were never started or false and nonexistent identities.
Later, it was discovered that much of the money that went to Chiledeportes' Valparaíso Region branch was used to finance the political campaigns of Concertación members, mainly those of Party for Democracy deputies Laura Soto and Rodrigo González Torres.
[6][7] The crisis continued when it was discovered that Senator Guido Girardi, of the Party for Democracy, had used false bills from a nonexistent company, Publicam, in order to justify his campaign expenses to the Servicio de Impuestos Internos (Internal Tax Service).
The right-wing opposition (the Alliance for Chile) likened the Chiledeportes and Publicam cases to previous corruption scandals that took place during the administration of Ricardo Lagos.
Former presidential candidate Sebastián Piñera (which later also was found linked to Publicam[9]) said the scandals proved the government had few qualms about committing electoral fraud and intervention.
Likewise, former presidential candidate Joaquín Lavín said that the victory of Lagos by a razor-thin 2.62% margin in 2000 could have been due to election fraud.
The crisis deepened when Edgardo Boeninger, a Christian Democrat and former minister secretary general of the presidency, said in an interview with influential Chilean newspaper El Mercurio that "since the beginning of the Concertación it was thought that, since the private sector's money favored the right-wing parties, it would not be illegitimate to receive public [government] money.".
However, in El Mercurio former president Patricio Aylwin acknowledged that some ministers in his cabinet had been paid extra money that came from government reserved funds, though he denied the charges of an "ideology of corruption".
Former Minister of Public Works Juan Etcheberry resigned in protest of the "Stalinist" action of the Tribunal in dismissing Schaulsohn.
After Flores' resignation, Bitar declared that he had done "everything possible" to maintain party unity and that any "responsibility" lay on those who voluntarily left.
[20] Schaulsohn testified before Judge Carlos Aránguiz of the Court of Appeals of Rancagua on January 10, upon his return from a New Years trip to New York City.
[25] The Alianza's report, among other things, discovered that the head of Chiledeportes, Christian Democrat Catalina Depassier, lied about her credentials.
In an interview with the press, Monckeberg stated that a phone call with the vice-headmaster of the university revealed that Depassier had never graduated from that institution.
They also told us that in '84, [she] also studied for one semester in the school of Government and Public Service, which she left for academic reasons," Monckeberg said in an interview with El Mercurio.
[28] Meanwhile, deputies Soto and González denied the charges that they had used government money to fund their election campaigns, saying the accusations were a "political maneuver by the right".
Soto refused to attend the hearing, and her attorney Juan Carlos Manríquez declared that she believed her presence was unnecessary.
