Before February’s devastating earthquake, Fernando Echeverria ran a major construction company and led Chile’s powerful chamber of builders, which successfully lobbied against government inspections that would have made companies like his more accountable for faulty structures.
Now, despite the failure of three of his newer buildings in the magnitude 8.8 temblor, Echeverria leads the reconstruction of Chile’s urban Santiago region as the governor appointed by Chilean President Sebastian Pinera.
It’s one of numerous potential conflicts the conservative president has created in his zeal to run the reconstruction like the private ventures that made him a billionaire.
Pinera also gave US$15 million in no-bid contracts to three giant building-supply companies formerly run or represented by Cabinet members and another political appointee — cutting out local vendors who desperately needed the sales after the quake. And he’s given private construction firms a leading role in designing new master plans for destroyed cities.
“It’s a betrayal, I would say,” said Pedro Poblete, who leads a group of neighborhood associations in the Maule region, where the quake crumbled the capital of Talca and released a tsunami that destroyed 80 percent of the heart of coastal Constitucion.
Pinera all but dismissed the potential for conflicts of interest from his appointees — nearly all from top corporate ranks — who now make decisions that could affect the bottom lines of their former companies. By sidestepping bureaucracy and demanding quick results, he delivered shelters and schools ahead of schedule after the Feb. 27 quake, which killed 521 people, left more than 200,000 homeless and caused US$30 billion in damage.
“In life one always faces conflicts of interest — only the dead and the saints are removed from this situation,” he told a reporter for Argentina’s Clarin newspaper. “The important thing is to know how to resolve it correctly.”
His government has responded to the criticisms in part by adding transparency to a new tax law designed to encourage corporate donations for reconstruction, and by offering thousands of small cash subsidies to people in shelters.
However, Chileans accustomed to 20 straight years of center-left rule remain suspicious of the heavy corporate role. Political power is already highly concentrated in Chile, where the president appoints not only Cabinet ministers and agency leaders but governors as well.
Now Chile’s economic and political powers are combined in a way not seen since the 1973 to 1990 dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet, who was supported by the same right-wing parties Pinera returned to the executive branch.
Under Pinochet, builders persuaded authorities to eliminate government construction-site inspections, and cities lost their capacity to enforce the codes.
It took 15 years of democracy to restore some protections as part of Chile’s much-vaunted magnitude 9 earthquake standard adopted in 2005. But lobbying by the builders chamber, led by Echeverria from 2002 to 2004, contributed to some gaping holes: Companies pay for private site studies by third-party engineers, who aren’t clearly held responsible for their results, and cities are ill-equipped to ensure buildings were built according to the plans.
Most modern construction withstood the quake, but about 40 recently built multistory buildings failed, killing eight and leaving hundreds homeless. Two of Echeverria’s apartment buildings were left uninhabitable and a third has to be demolished.
Even Pinera’s Housing and Urban Development Minister Magdalena Matte says the quake exposed the need for stronger regulations.
“The most important thing we have to do as a ministry is to set new standards so this never happens again,” Matte said. “Because right now, no one is responsible.”
Echeverria, who like all Pinera appointees resigned from his private positions to take the government job, has refused to address residents who fear he won’t take responsibility for the damage.
He said through a government spokesman that he won’t comment on his private-sector past — even though he just left his job in March.
“He has removed himself from the businesses and sold his stock,” spokesman Rodrigo Miranda said. “He will not make any comments about his previous participation in construction.”
Australians were downloading virtual private networks (VPNs) in droves, while one of the world’s largest porn distributors said it was blocking users from its platforms as the country yesterday rolled out sweeping online age restriction. Australia in December became the first country to impose a nationwide ban on teenagers using social media. A separate law now requires artificial intelligence (AI)-powered chatbot services to keep certain content — including pornography, extreme violence and self-harm and eating disorder material — from minors or face fines of up to A$49.5 million (US$34.6 million). The country also joined Britain, France and dozens of US states requiring
Hungarian authorities temporarily detained seven Ukrainian citizens and seized two armored cars carrying tens of millions of euros in cash across Hungary on suspicion of money laundering, officials said on Friday. The Ukrainians were released on Friday, following their detention on Thursday, but Hungarian officials held onto the cash, prompting Ukraine to accuse Hungary’s Russia-friendly government of illegally seizing the money. “We will not tolerate this state banditism,” Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said. The seven detained Ukrainians were employees of the Ukrainian state-owned Oschadbank, who were traveling in the two armored cars that were carrying the money between Austria and
Kosovar President Vjosa Osmani on Friday after dissolving the Kosovar parliament said a snap election should be held as soon as possible to avoid another prolonged political crisis in the Balkan country at a time of global turmoil. Osmani said it is important for Kosovo to wrap up the upcoming election process and form functional institutions for political stability as the war rages in the Middle East. “Precisely because the geopolitical situation is that complex, it is important to finish this electoral process which is coming up,” she said. “It is very hard now to imagine what will happen next.” Kosovo, which declared
ACTIONABLE ADVICE: The majority of chatbots tested provided guidance on weapons, tactics and target selections, with Perplexity and Meta AI deemed to be the least safe From school shootings to synagogue bombings, leading artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots helped researchers plot violent attacks, according to a study published on Wednesday that highlighted the technology’s potential for real-world harm. Researchers from the nonprofit watchdog Center for Countering Digital Hate and CNN posed as 13-year-old boys in the US and Ireland to test 10 chatbots, including ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Perplexity, Deepseek and Meta AI. Eight of the chatbots assisted the make-believe attackers in more than half the responses, providing advice on “locations to target” and “weapons to use” in an attack, the study said. The chatbots had become a “powerful accelerant for
RSS