U.S. makes amends for Wikileaks documents criticizing Chilean president
Washington, DC, United States (AHN) – The U.S. government is trying to smooth over the latest blow to its diplomacy after a new Wikileaks disclosure revealed harsh State Department criticism of Chilean President Sebastian Pinera.
The State Department documents accuse him of shady business dealings before he was elected.
This week, U.S. Ambassador to Chile Alejandro D. Wolff issued a statement saying the United States had “respect and admiration” for Pinera.
The ambassador’s statement contrasts sharply with a 2009 State Department communication, called a cable, that described Pinera during his presidential campaign as a man who “handles both his business and politics to the limits of law and ethics.”
The cable published by Wikileaks also said the billionaire conservative was “linked in the past to a number of questionable actions” in his business dealings.
However, Chilean voters seemed unconcerned about them.
Wikileaks is a Web site that publishes secret government documents. In recent weeks, Wikileaks has been publishing more than 250,000 secret U.S. State Department cables.
One Chilean media report said news of the cables about the country’s president “fell like a cluster bomb” on the Pinera administration.
The cable apparently referred to a 1982 lawsuit against Pinera that accused him of fraud.
He was accused of using his influence in Banco de Talca to make millions of dollars in bad loans to companies he owned.
The bank subsequently collapsed.
The lawsuit said Pinera violated Chile’s banking laws.
The State Department cables also describe Pinera’s controversial 2006 purchase of three million shares in his flagship business LAN Airlines.
Chilean securities regulators fined Pinera about $700,000 for buying the shares on the same day the airline’s board of directors signed off on an earnings report.
The Chilean regulators said Pinera was fined for “failing to abstain” from buying shares while he was benefiting from inside information.
The fine represents an administrative violation but carries no criminal penalties.
A State Department cable from former U.S. Ambassador to Chile Paul Simons said Pinera is a “competitive businessman and politician, prone to taking risks…some of his actions appear to cross the line of what is strictly legal.”
Since taking office in March, Pinera has divested himself of his stakes in LAN Airlines, local television station Chilevision and soccer club Colo-Colo.
As the State Department cables were being mentioned widely in the Chilean news media, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Arturo Valenzuela called Chilean Foreign Minister Alfredo Moreno.
Moreno said in interviews that Valenzuela told him the cables describing Pinera were not properly filtered. Valenzuela also reportedly said the opinions expressed in the cables were not the official policy of the U.S. government.
About the same time, U.S. Ambassador Wolff issued his statement, which said, “The U.S. government has high regard and great respect and admiration for President Sebastian Pinera, who has worked hard for the best interests of his country and people of Chile.”
The statement also said that “our partnership is unique and will continue to deepen our cooperation in the months and years ahead.”
The State Department cables also took aim at Pinera’s presidential predecessor, Michelle Bachelet.
They described her as being well-intentioned but a poor administrator whose policy toward Argentina hurt Chilean interests.
Pinera administration spokeswoman Ena von Baer downplayed the importance of the Wikileaks documents.
She said the comments about Bachelet represented “leaks of private conversations that do not reflect the official opinion of anyone, where no one is responsible for these views and that are often taken out of context.”
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