SANTIAGO, Dec 30 (Reuters) - Chilean Finance Minister Ignacio Briones stated in a tv interview Wedn
SANTIAGO, Dec 30 (Reuters) – Chilean Finance Minister Ignacio Briones stated in a tv interview Wednesday that Julio Ponce, a principal shareholder of SQM, the world’s second largest lithium producer, “could be in jail” had a case of illicit buying and selling introduced in opposition to him in Chile been carried out in america.
Chile’s inventory market regulator in 2014 fined Ponce, then chairman of SQM and former son-in-law of late dictator Augusto Pinochet, almost $70 million for his function in a market manipulation scandal identified regionally because the “Caso Cascadas.”
Ponce appealed that high-quality – then the biggest ever handed down by the Chilean regulator – in a decrease courtroom and gained. The decrease courtroom slashed the penalty to lower than $three million, a choice upheld by the nation’s Supreme Court docket in October.
Finance Minister Briones stated in an interview on Chilean tv program Inventory Disponible that the fines would have been far stiffer in a rustic like america.
“It is not my function to second guess the courtroom’s choices… however in case you have been to ask me, this case, in america, what would have occurred? He’d be in jail,” Briones stated of Ponce.
Each SQM and Ponce’s lawyer declined to touch upon Briones’ assertion.
Briones stated on the tv program such corruption instances undermined Chile’s democracy.
“I believe these instances generate a way of inequality earlier than the legislation, and that’s terrible for our democracy,” Briones stated.
The South American nation, a high lithium and copper producer, final yr noticed mass protests in opposition to inequality that led to a referendum vote in October in favor of rewriting the structure.
The Cascadas case triggered an uproar in Chile lengthy earlier than the 2019 protests, shaking investor confidence in a nation lengthy lauded for low ranges of corruption.
In a separate and unrelated case in 2017, the U.S. Division of Justice fined SQM greater than $15 million in reference to funds to “politically-connected” people in Chile, a violation of the International Corrupt Practices Act.
Nobody was jailed in that case.
(Reporting by Dave Sherwood; Modifying by David Gregorio)
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