Dictator’s widow in trouble
Lucia Hiriart, the widow of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, is under investigation for allegedly swindling the Chilean treasury of millions of dollars by selling properties designated as community centres.
A report by Chilean prosecutors also accuses Hiriart, 91, of siphoning funds from the NGO she ran, CEMA Chile, to pay Pinochet’s living expenses in Britain while he was under house arrest following his arrest there in 1998.
Chile’s minister of public property, V´ıctor Osorio, told The Guardian that prosecutors were preparing to file formal charges over allegations that CEMA Chile misappropriated millions of dollars in government funds.
During her 42 years at the head of the organisation, Hiriart oversaw the sale of dozens of government properties which had been donated to the foundation. Chilean officials say that profits from the sales were transferred abroad or simply disappeared.
The CEMA Chile foundation was founded in 1954 as a vehicle for charitable works by the country’s first ladies. Hiriart took over following the bloody 1973 military coup that put her husband in power, acting as the group’s president and then president for life until she resigned the position last week.
The organisation was originally conceived as a community centre for farm workers, but Hiriart changed the focus to ‘‘women’s centres’’ with a focus on quilting and cake-baking classes. It still has dozens of centres across the country that are run by volunteers, but according to investigators the group has largely become a vehicle to buy, sell and rent properties.
In July, Chilean police raided the organisation’s headquarters in the capital, Santiago, copying computer hard drives and searching for accounting records.
CEMA Chile officials refused to comment.
The profits from the real estate sales are thought to exceed US$10 million, but the investigation has been hampered by the fact that most records prior to 1996 are missing. Investigators described the bookkeeping at the foundation as ‘‘chaotic’’ – many properties were listed with a value of just US$1.