Pandora Papers: Chile President disproves claims of copper and iron mine sale in 2010

Chilean President Sebastian Pinera has disproved the allegations made by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) about the sale of the copper and iron mine Minera Dominga in the British Virgin Islands.

Pinera's family transferred the Minera Dominga firm to the president's childhood friend, millionaire Carlos Alberto Delano. It was signed in Chile in 2010 for $14 million and another in the Virgin Islands for $138 million, according to the current ICIJ leak, Pandora Papers.

As per the reports of Sputnik, Pinera's office said that the facts mentioned in the report regarding the sale of Minera Dominga were already investigated in depth by the Public Ministry and the Courts of Justice in 2017, and the Prosecutor's Office recommended that the case be terminated, to comply with the law, considering President Sebastian Pinera's lack of participation in the aforementioned operation.

According to Pinera's representatives, the president had not managed his own businesses in 12 years and was unaware of the Minera Dominga selling process.

The ICIJ released a new leak on the purported financial secrets of over 35 current and former world leaders, as well as more than 330 politicians and bureaucrats from around the world, on October 3, according to Sputnik.

The disclosure, dubbed 'Pandora Papers' after the 2016 Panama Papers disaster, was based on a breach of 11.9 million files documenting the activity of 14 offshore law firms, according to the ICIJ. The Pandora Papers investigation into offshore schemes names the current presidents of Ecuador, Chile and the Dominican Republic, as well as 11 former Latin American officials.

More about Panama Papers

Beginning on October 3, 2021, the ICIJ published 11.9 million leaked documents, comprising 2.9 gigabytes of data. The ICIJ's news outlets described the document leak as their most comprehensive expose of financial secrecy yet, with documents, images, emails and spreadsheets from 14 financial service companies in countries such as Panama, Switzerland and the United Arab Emirates outnumbering their previous release 'Panama Papers' in 2016, which contained 11.5 million confidential documents. At the time of its release, the ICIJ claimed it would not name its source for the documents.

Image: AP