A Chilean court said on Friday that it has completed a decade-long investigation into the origin of late dictator Augusto Pinochet’s fortune and the general’s suspected embezzlement of public funds.
An appeals court in Santiago decided unanimously to close the investigation, clearing the way for lead Judge Manuel Valderrama to formally accuse former Chilean military members in relation to alleged collaborations with Pinochet in the so-called Riggs Bank case.
In August of last year, a court decided not to charge any of Pinochet’s family members in the case, but did charge three retired generals and three retired colonels for the suspected embezzlement of public funds.
They include former generals Jorge Ballerino, Ramon Castro and Sergio Moreno, and former colonels Eugenio Castillo, Gabriel Vergara and Juan MacLean.
Pinochet was charged in 2005 with tax evasion in connection with the millions of US dollars held in foreign bank accounts, which came to light after a US Senate investigation into banking irregularities at the now-defunct Washington-based Riggs Bank.
An audit by the Universidad de Chile’s Business and Economics faculty in 2010 estimated that Pinochet had accumulated US$21 million before his death, of which more than US$17 million was of unknown origin.
Pinochet, who took power after a 1973 military coup, died in 2006 at 91. He never faced a full trial for alleged crimes committed during his dictatorship from 1973 to 1990, when an estimated 3,000 people were kidnapped and killed, or “disappeared,” and 28,000 were tortured.
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