Email Leak Exposes Misuse of Public Funds by Ministry of Housing: Democracia Viva Foundation and Political Connections

2023-06-22 04:08:00

An email leak revealed that The Ministry of Housing had been warned last May about the agreements with public funds close to 426 million pesos between the Democracia Viva Foundationof Daniel Andradepartner of the self-suspended vice president of the Lower House, catalina perezy Carlos Contrerasthen seremi of the Minvu of the Antofagasta Region -currently resigned-, all militants of Democratic Revolution (DR).

This is stated in an email sent on May 2 by the Association of Serviu Officialschaired by Carla Olivares, who put among the recipients of the information the Undersecretary of Housing, Tatiana Rojas (also a DR militant), in addition to an extensive list of authorities from the portfolio headed by the socialist Carlos Montes.

The document, published by The Mercury y Megaalready warned at the beginning: “Along with greetings, I address you as president of the Serviu Officials Association, to expose a delicate and complex situation that the Precarious Settlements team has been going through for some time now, so I ask everyone to address the problems that we are going through today due to the sole responsibility of Mr. Carlos Contreras, Minvu seremi, Antofagasta Region”.

This program “develops its intervention in the different camps in the region through a series of collaboration agreements between seremi-Minvu-Serviu and foundations. From the moment that the SEREMI assumes its functions, we have been marginalized from any decision regarding issues of relevance to our work. For some time now, some situations have arisen that concern us, given that in the opinion of the team —to which I also belong— the Third Clause of the Agreements “on the correct use of resources” is not being complied with.” the email pointed out, placing the third clause in capital letters and putting the good use of resources in quotation marks.

By enumerating “the issues that are highly complex”, the email warned that “The Democracia Viva Foundation currently has 02 Agreements whose Director —who signed the agreements— is the partner of Deputy Miss Catalina Pérez, which seems complex to us since the seremi is from the same political party. At the same time, Said Director entered into these agreements in October 2022, the same month in which he was already an adviser to the Ministry of Defense”.

“He boasts of being a friend…”

According The Mercuryafter not having an echo among the Housing authorities, the officials contacted the deputy for Antofagasta Jaime Araya (independent- PPD).

That message, as the parliamentarian himself reproduced in the morning, said the following: “Hello, I got your contact due to the desperation we have due to the way in which we have been threatened by the Antofagasta Housing Seremi, who boasts of being a personal friend of deputy Catalina Pérez, who is also vice president of the Chamber. There are so many irregularities that we have denounced, and that is why we are being mistreated and persecuted.”

Araya told the newspaper that “On June 1, they sent me a copy of the email containing the complaint from the Serviu officials via WhatsApp, I immediately requested more information and received no response., so I have been collecting more accurate background information, through open sources. The email clearly shows that in May the officials warned their superiors of this situation.”

The legislator added that “they are serious antecedents”indicating that “the law of probity is very clear when pointing out that any public official must refrain from making any decision that favors close friends, be they friends or relatives, that duty of abstention was held by the Housing Seremi and the president of the foundation. They They must explain who called whom to make this happen.”

“For the rest, if the agreements themselves prevented the delivery of resources, if there were pending surrenders. How was it possible that they delivered resources in a second and third opportunity? There are many questions and few answers.”he added.

Minister Montes assured this Wednesday that “The sensible and reasonable thing is for the Democracia Viva Foundation to put an end to the agreement and restore the assigned resources,” given that, in the event of not doing so, the Government itself will initiate a termination process to carry out this action.

On the other hand, the leader of the Housing portfolio stressed that “the will of the Government and of this Ministry in particular, is collaborate very proactively with the criminal investigation that the Public Ministry opened yesterday afternoon: we are going to support this investigation with everything”.

For this, the Executive decided to send an investigative team to the Antofagasta Region and deliver -after an arduous task of gathering- all the relevant information to the Prosecutor’s Office.

“Also, as Ministry we are conducting an administrative summary that will have as its final objective to clarify the facts and determine administrative responsibilitiesas well as changing the resource transfer system and its processes established in 2015 and applied for the first time in 2019,” Montes explained.

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