Pinochet's Widow Denies Stealing Millions in Public Funds

Lucia Hiriart, widow of former Chilean dictator General Augusto Pinochet, has denied that she embezzled up to US$18 million dollars from a real estate sale related to a charity foundation she presided over, as she faces an investigation over stealing the public funds, a Dec. 14 judicial statement published Thursday showed.

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"All the money from these sales were returned to the assets of Cema Chile. This money was never distracted for private purposes, neither mine nor my relatives," Hiriart told the judge in charge of her case according to excerpts from a published judicial statement by the Chilean newspaper El Mercurio.

The 93-year-old widow of the former dictator is accused of misappropriating public assets through Cema Chile, a foundation she administered up until August when an investigation was launched by two communist legislators, together with the Relatives of Disappeared Detainees Group, who filed a lawsuit earlier this year.

The Chilean Justice Ministry is investigating what happened to 135 parcels of public lands handed over to Cema Chile for free during the 1973-1990 Pinochet dictatorship.

The foundation is accused of selling more than 30 of the properties between 2009 and 2015 for more than 12 billion pesos — some US$18 million.

The foundation was created in 1957, before Pinochet was installed as dictator, to help needy women organize and work as a community to improve their lives, but after the 1973 coup, Hiriart assumed the presidency and changed the organization's statutes to allow her to remain in the post indefinitely.

She turned the foundation into a machine to expand the base of popular support for the Pinochet regime.

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Media allegations in November 2015 claimed Hiriart was enriching herself with the sale and rental of public lands administered by the foundation.

It also came to light last month that Cema Chile transferred funds to pay for "expenses associated" with the arrest of Pinochet in London, where he remained between October 1998 and March 2000.

According to an October 2005 report by Chile's Investigative Police, or PDI, which reproduces minutes of the board of Cema Chile, in November 1998 the organization authorized the transfer of US$50,000 to Lucia Hiriart to deal with the expenses of the dictator's detention in Britain.