According to a letter from the Internal Revenue Service (SII), the lawyer Andrea Martones, who advised senators during the processing of the “Drug Law 2”, received $215 million Chilean pesos from pharmaceutical laboratories between January 2018 and August 2020. .
According to the SII document recorded by the newspaper La Tercera, the money was paid through 45 invoices for different services, mostly classified as “legal advice.” Likewise, among the clients of “Martones SpA” at the same time that he was advising the senators, are Pfizer, CSL Behring, Laboratorio Chile, Novartis, Roche, Abbvie, Merck, Takeda and Boehring Ingelheim, all laboratories that are partners of the Chamber of Pharmaceutical Innovation (CIF).
The most onerous services Martones provided were to CSL Behring for $54 million, PTC Therapeutics for $53 million and Takeda for $36 million. In addition, according to the official document of the SII, in the period in which Martones was an advisor to the senators, there is also an invoice for $464,000 issued to Socofar SA, the parent company of the Cruz Verde pharmacy chain.
Ad honorem legal advice
It was common to see the lawyer Andrea Martones during the sessions of the “Drugs 2” mixed commission, until January 17, 2022. We talked about the bill that seeks to regulate generic bioequivalent drugs and avoid the vertical integration of laboratories and pharmacies. The presence of Martones had become a habit at the meetings, since she had attended as an “ad honorem” adviser in 23 of the 28 sessions at the request of the then senators Guido Girardi (PPD), Rabindranath Quinteros (PS) and Carolina Goic (DC).
It is worth mentioning that Martones’ relationship with Senator Girardi was also a source of controversy within the mixed commission, since in 11 of the sessions her attendance was officially registered as “senator Girardi’s advisor.” Then, in October 2020, Girardi clarified that she was not his adviser, but only his last name was recorded for the procedures for entering the Senate. From that day on, Martones participated as an “expert in legislation on drugs and medical devices.”
Martones, as head of legal counsel at the Institute of Public Health and adviser on regulatory affairs for the Undersecretary of Public Health in the second term of Michelle Bachelet, had justified the need for her collaboration in the project. However, her active role in the processing of the project unleashed a series of cross accusations from pressure and lobbying that ended with a criminal investigation by the Public Ministry for possible crimes of bribery and bribery.
In January of last year, during one of the commission’s sessions, it was revealed that Martones maintained commercial ties with the laboratories, one of the players in the industry that precisely seeks to regulate more forcefully through the law. In addition, the legal vacuum in which those who advise legislators in the processing of bills without payment or contract operate was exposed, an open space for different interests to exercise some influence by circumventing the mandatory records established by the Law on Lobby.
The image of a $16 million invoice issued in June 2020 by Martones SpA, a company owned by Andrea Martones, began to circulate on social networks for a service provided to the CIF, a union that brings together 23 international laboratories with a presence in Chile, one of the actors that the new law seeks to regulate more forcefully.
The disclosure of the bill led some members of the commission to request the suspension of the processing of the project, while others accused that it was a political operation to prevent the approval of the law. Thus, after the session, Deputy Andrés Celis (RN) filed a complaint with the Public Ministry.
