Former national prosecutor Jorge Abbott regretted not having been able to reverse his bad image, according to an interview published this Sunday by the newspaper La Tercera.
The former incumbent turned 75 and this Saturday, for which he had to leave his position by law when there is a year left to complete his term.
In 2021, in an internal survey of the Prosecutor’s Office, 50% of prosecutors described his management as “poor”. Despite this, Abbott told La Tercera that she is leaving “with the affection of the prosecutors, officials, with clean hands and with her head held high.”
The survey also revealed various irregularities in its management, as well as a discriminatory climate for sexual minorities, native peoples and people with limited resources.
political agreement
Abbott has also been criticized for the results in the cases of illegal financing of politics, with cases such as Corpesca (where former senator Jaime Orpis was sentenced to prison) and SQM, cases in which there was even talk of a political agreement and The lightness of the sentences was criticized, such as probation and “ethics classes” in the cases of Carlos Eugenio Lavín and Carlos Alberto Délano, in the Penta case. Abbott has always maintained that there could be no more progress because of the Internal Revenue Service’s inaction.
“It is false that I committed to or participated in a political agreement to benefit those who were charged in these cases and, beyond the fact that alternative sentences or solutions have not met the expectations of some sectors, it is not true that there has been impunity in those cases,” said Abbott, who assured that there were 32 people convicted in this regard.
“Regarding the ethics classes for the defendants Délano and Lavín, they were never a request from the Public Ministry, but rather a condition imposed unilaterally by the guarantee judge to access the benefit of the alternative sentence to which both defendants agreed.”
pay costs
In 2021, the head of the Public Ministry acknowledged that he received Senator Jorge Pizarro at his home when he was being investigated for irregular financing of politics, in the framework of the SQM case, although he pointed out that this occurred before his assumption as head of the Public Ministry .
When asked about these meetings, Abbott indicated in La Tercera that “in light of the facts, what I believe is that I paid too high costs for decisions that I often did not share. And, in others, in which I had no participation, and that they had the negative opinion of the National Prosecutor’s Office”.
Likewise, in the face of the “corrupt” treatment it receives on social networks, it pointed out that “the minimal rationality of social networks has already been sufficiently treated by expert connoisseurs of this modern form of communication.”
“However, they produce effects on people that no one is oblivious to. From this, what has affected me the most is the pain that has been caused to my closest beings, mainly my children, grandchildren and siblings” , he pointed.
Bad image
Abbott also spoke of an “unfounded bad image” in his particular case and spoke of a “feeling that ran through my entire administration, and that is not having been able to reverse the construction of an unfounded bad image of myself.”
“I was able to make bad decisions or, perhaps, make unfortunate statements. But what is clear to me is that there is no prosecutor who can assert that I tried to intervene in any procedural decision that they must make with total objectivity and autonomy,” he said.
“To date, despite all the journalistic investigations and reports, there is no prosecutor who has affirmed that I issued any particular instruction on any cause. Everything has been an artificial construction. It would suffice to ask any of the prosecutors who have had his charge the investigations on illegal financing of politics, which to date none of my censors has done,” he said.
