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For many years, the fame that lawyer Luis Hermosilla enjoyed as one of the country’s leading criminal lawyers was not due to his intellectual and professional merits but rather to his ability to relate to political power and charm the public. most important businessmen to officiate in their defenses and obtain acquittal of their tax crimes and other absurdities. His elevation coincides above all with his status as advisor to Andrés Chadwick, Minister of the Interior of the late President Sebastián Piñera, a function he fulfilled during the two government periods of a president who took advantage of his rapid illicit enrichment to become a senator of the Republic and then access La Moneda.
Unlike other authentic Chilean criminal lawyers, Hermosilla’s resume does not include writings or arguments before the courts that created jurisprudence or obtained prominent sentences. Hermosilla always acted in the hallway of the old courts of justice and other public institutions such as the Internal Revenue Service to achieve procedural successes and tax advantages in favor of those he represented. On the basis, of course, of buying the will of the judges and the trust of the most spurious public officials. To manage magistrates and auxiliary agents of Justice, for example, promotions in the administrative ladder in exchange, as has been demonstrated, for relevant and secret information that would serve to fuel cases that earned them millionaire fees from the ” “collar and tie criminals.” According to the expression used by Camila Vallejo, the young minister spokesperson for Gabriel Boric’s government.
“Mission accomplished” the lawyer says to the director of the PDI when he congratulates him for WhatsApp for his appointment, to receive in less than fifteen days all types of confidential documents from the head of the civil police, many of which are yet to be known.
In his desire to gain fame, money and power, Hermosilla defended, in addition to politicians and businessmen, horrendous pedophiles, as well as standing out as a lawyer for the family of the late senator Jaime Guzmán Errázuriz, the main ideologue of the Pinochet dictatorship. In this role, of course, he abandoned his youth militancy in the Communist Party to begin rubbing shoulders with the ruling class, to the extent that he also managed to enter the Palace to assume the defense of the questioned chief of advisors of the current ruler. Who is accused of having been aware of and hiding one of the most scandalous scandals that compromises the current administration. This is the so-called “foundations” case that has several left-wing militants dedicated to embezzling tax funds destined for the construction of popular housing.
There are many professional henchmen at the service of Hermosilla among colleagues, politicians and journalists, serving the large number and powerful clients that his law firm has obtained in times when corruption among businessmen, uniformed officers, mayors, parliamentarians and others has been rampant. Last week, finally, an investigative telephone recording of his cell phone has uncovered the close relationship he had with the general director of the Investigative Police, who has already been formalized for corruption and delivery of documents reserved to this lawyer. A police service rewarded with his appointment as head of the civil police, thanks to the “influences” exerted by Hermosilla and of which the lawyer boasts in another of the recordings that have been publicly released.
This is a whole new chapter that has exposed the lack of police honesty, but that has the possibility of escalating and verifying other aspects, which may compromise the main minister and cousin brother of Piñera, as well as the President himself who has just die in a plane crash. At the same time, it discovered the added corruption of judges and magistrates under the Hermosilla area of influence, whose appointments are also suspected to be due to their favors in favor of the political class. In a country where such appointments must be made with the consent of the Executive Branch and Parliament, which denies the supposed independence of the third branch of the State.
The curious thing is that the boss of Chilean Investigations, Sergio Muñoz, is already detained to be prosecuted, but so far the lawyer Hermosilla has not yet been charged for his repeated bribes to public officials, although it is estimated that this time it will be very difficult for him to escape. the action of Justice with the profuse amount of evidence that would incriminate him. Starting from those recordings in which he calls his clients to “cash up” to finance the bribery and save them, through his intermediation, from million-dollar fines for their evasion, tax evasion and other crimes.
The corruption that has been revealed on the part of the head of the civil police adds to the process that for similar reasons compromises his predecessor in office. All of which has deeply weakened public faith, at a time when organized crime and the action of drug trafficking gangs are intensifying, devastating the country’s population with horrendous and daily crimes that were not known in Chile until a few years ago.
To make matters worse, we already know of the upcoming formalization of the Director General of Carabineros for his command responsibility in the severe violations of Human Rights committed by his troops and subordinates in the Social Outbreak of 2019. An officer who has refused to leave his position until he is judicially charged next May, despite the demand for resignation that has already been expressed and the wishes of the Boric Government itself. A general in rebellion who enjoys the explicit support of the opposition right and who has fostered the serious climate of strained political relations. What he could perfectly trace back to seditious acts, in the style of what happened before the Military Coup of 1973.
In a country with an economy that cannot recover despite the euphoria of the Minister of Finance over the slight growth of 0.2 percent of GDP last year, the truth is that it is the increase in crime and corruption that mainly affects the disenchantment popular, the discredit of politics and democratic reluctance. Which is not at all auspicious with the formalization of the top heads of our two police forces and the fact that criminals like Hermosilla are discovered who act with complete impudence and impunity, piercing the prestige of public institutions such as that of their high officials. in the midst of the confusion and disdain of the political class.
By Juan Pablo Cárdenas