Gustavo Abarzua Rivadeneira, Brigadier General of the Army. He directed the CNI from April 1989 until March 1990, replacing General Hugo Salas Wensel. In parallel, he was in charge of the Army Intelligence Directorate (DINE), a position he held until his retirement.

He entered the Military School in 1954, graduating as a second lieutenant in 1958. He served in Iquique, Linares, and Traiguen before entering the War Academy in 1971, from which he graduated in 1974. He was later assigned to the military mission in India and Pakistan, and between 1979 and 1980, he assumed the role of Head of Public Relations for the CNI.

Later, he was a military attaché in Uruguay, and upon returning to Chile, he assumed the role of General Director of Intelligence. He was one of Pinochet’s trusted men and held two of the highest positions in the repressive apparatus. On December 28, he was arrested for his participation in the clandestine financial firm “La Cutufa.”

Gustavo Abarzua Rivadeneira began as part of the team of torturers in Iquique and Pisagua, serving under Prosecutor Mario Sergio Acuña Riquelme, in a group that called itself "La Sonora Palacios." This team was composed of Army Sergeant Roberto Fuentes Zambrano ("el Guatón Fuentes"), Army Corporal Juan Arturo Aguirre Guaringa, Miguel Aguirre Álvarez, and Lieutenants Conrado García Giaier, Gustavo Abarzúa Rivadeneira, Carlos Herrera Jiménez, Carlos Irigoyen Lafuente, and Pedro Collado Marti.

They were joined by Carabineros Lieutenant José Antonio Muñoz and Corporals Blas Barraza Quintero, René Egidio Valdivia, and Froilán Moncada. According to witnesses, the entire team was responsible for detaining, interrogating, torturing, and even carrying out political executions.

Among the victims are: Hugo Tomás Martínez Guillén, Luis Aníbal Manríquez Wilden, Tomás Orlando Cabello Cabello, and Jorge Rogelio Marín Rossel.

Subsequently, he climbed the ranks in his repressive duties, becoming the final Director of the CNI, and once this organization was dissolved in 1999, he continued as director of the DINE.

Among the final crimes executed by the CNI was the assassination of Jecar Nehgme Cristi, who was riddled with bullets by active-duty Army officials: Pedro Guzmán Olivares, Luis Sanhueza Ross, Jaime Norambuena Aguilar, Manuel Allende Tello, and Silvio Corssini Escárate, who, under the orders of Brigadier Enrique Leddy Araneda and General Gustavo Abarzúa, shot him at point-blank range with 18 bullets on the night of September 4, 1989.

General Abarzúa Rivadeneira was acquitted of this crime, even though it was committed by personnel under his command.

These are the sentences handed down by the Chilean justice system for the crime against Jecar:

Brigadier Enrique Leddy Araneda: 5 years of SUPERVISED RELEASE.

Colonel Pedro Javier Guzmán Olivares: 3 years, REMITTED SENTENCE. Captain Luis Arturo Sanhueza Ross: 3 years, REMITTED SENTENCE. Colonel Jaime Eduardo Norambuena Aguilar: 2 years, REMITTED SENTENCE. Major Manuel Allende Tello: 541 days, REMITTED SENTENCE. Captain Silvio Corsini Escárate: 2 years, REMITTED SENTENCE. General Gustavo Abarzúa Rivadeneira: NO CONVICTION.

Gustavo Abarzúa is also closely linked to the assassination of Germán Palominos; also implicated are the then-lieutenants Rivadeneira, Conrado García Giaier, Carlos Irigoyen Lafuente, and Enrique Rosales.

Accused of being a “ferocious torturer” in 1973 and currently an active-duty colonel and head of the Logistics Directorate of the Chilean Army, Conrado García Giaier is set to be promoted to general this year.

After remaining semi-conscious in his cell for three days, with several fractured ribs and a fractured shoulder, a destroyed eye, and urinating blood, in November 1973, Jorge Verdejo Magna arrived at the infirmary of the Pisagua political prison camp in the far north of Chile, where he was hospitalized for twelve days.

He had been forced to crawl with his bare torso over dirt and crushed glass, and to lie on a sheet of iron heated by the sun at the entrance of the prison. The same lieutenant who had tortured him climbed on top of him and stomped on his back with his heels.

Verdejo had fallen into the hands of Lieutenant Conrado Vicente García Giaier, according to the prisoners, one of their most “ferocious torturers” in Pisagua.

In August 1990, Verdejo denounced Lieutenant García as his torturer before Judge Hernán Sánchez Marré, who that year investigated the discovery of a clandestine grave containing 19 bodies of former prisoners in Pisagua.

His testimony is signed. “The officer who beat us the most in Pisagua and was characterized by his ferocity was Lieutenant Conrado García,” Verdejo told Judge Sánchez. Today, Conrado García is an active-duty colonel in Chile and head of the Second Department of the Army’s Logistics Directorate on the eighth floor of the Armed Forces building in Santiago, across from the office of the President of the Republic, Ricardo Lagos, in the La Moneda palace.

The officer could be promoted to general in the new restructuring of the high command this coming October.

Lawyer Adil Brkovic, a plaintiff in the Pisagua trials before Judge Juan Guzmán Tapia, the magistrate who managed to prosecute former dictator Augusto Pinochet in Chile, maintains that the current Colonel García must be prosecuted because there is too much testimony and evidence against him, and adds that he has requested this of Magistrate Guzmán. “Judge Guzmán has been repeatedly asked to take his statement as a defendant for the crime of illicit association and torture.

The only thing missing to bring him to trial is for the judge to interrogate him. I hope the magistrate does so now, because there is an abundance of evidence to prosecute him as a torturer,” Brkovic told Página/12.

The serious accusations are leveled against the then-Lieutenant García by at least twelve former prisoners of the Pisagua concentration camp, under their signature, both before Judge Sánchez and Magistrate Guzmán Tapia. “On December 1, 1973, they took 60 of us prisoners out to the outer courtyard of the prison in our underwear.

Lieutenant García and Commander Larraín beat us and then took us up a hill, put us in drums, and rolled us down the hill,” recalled former prisoner Freddy Alonso Oyanedel from Iquique in a telephone conversation with Página/12.

Prisoner Nelson Márquez Agurto was forced by Lieutenant Conrado García to climb onto the hood of a jeep with his bare torso. The officer accelerated the vehicle down the main street of Pisagua and braked suddenly.

Márquez was thrown off and was injured by the landing. Afterward, García forced him to spend nights naked outside the prison. Weeks later, Márquez went insane and attempted an escape. He was discovered hiding on the Pisagua pier and riddled with bullets on January 18, 1974.

By then, García was no longer in Pisagua, because according to four lists that exist in the proceedings of judges Sánchez and Guzmán, he remained in the camp along with Lieutenants Gustavo Abarzúa Rivadeneira and Irigoyen, under the command of Captain Hugo Elzo, between November 20, 1973, and December 20 of that year.

Some time ago, Colonel García himself acknowledged to Página/12 his presence in Pisagua at that time, although he denied the torture. One of the witnesses to Márquez’s torment was prisoner Luis Tapia Hidalgo, who told judges Sánchez and Guzmán, directly accusing García under his signature. “Lieutenant García was characterized as being the most ferocious of the punishers and torturers during the time I was detained in Pisagua,” concluded Tapia in his statement.

The Organist García had moved the organ from the Pisagua parish to the prison guard room. Before beginning his torture sessions, the officer would announce himself by playing chords on the liturgical musical instrument.

The prisoners nicknamed him “The Mad Monk.” “Lieutenant Conrado García was so wretched that one day he forced us to throw ourselves on the floor and clean the prison floor, which had just been mopped with kerosene, with our tongues.

Meanwhile, he would jump on our backs. I remember that he crushed the kidneys of José González Enei, who was an athlete, with his boots, and he was urinating blood,” recalled former prisoner Luis González Vivas for Página/12.

He also recalled how Lieutenant García repeatedly tortured the 17-year-old Andrés Carló. Witnesses to García’s torture of young Carló were Tapia Hidalgo, Joaquín Naranjo, Juan Petersen Barreda, Benito Muñoz Zavala, Haroldo Quintero Bugueño, Hernán Núñez Vega, and Ernesto Pérez Fuentes. “Of all the officers who passed through Pisagua, this one was the most brutal, and now I think he is going to be a general.

I cannot understand it, a man who tortured so much,” summarized González.

Source: Pagina12;

Former Metropolitan Chief of the CNI: Main defendant in the death of Jecar Neghme ends 'pact of silence'

Brigadier (Ret.) Enrique Leddy, alias ''El Burro'', decided to break the loyalty he maintained with his superiors after being sentenced to five years and one day in prison, along with five other subordinates. According to human rights lawyer Nelson Caucoto, in the appeal of the sentence, issued in July by Minister Dolmestch, the former agent admits to having hidden information.

The former metropolitan chief of the CNI, Brigadier (Ret.) Enrique Leddy Araneda, decided to break his loyalty to the command and admit that he received superior orders to execute the MIR militant Jecar Neghme Cristi on September 4, 1989, a crime he carried out along with five other subordinates of the repressive agency created during the military dictatorship.

Neghme died riddled with bullets on Calle Bulnes in Santiago at the hands of the so-called "Blue Brigade" of the CNI, during the electoral campaign that culminated in the victory of Patricio Aylwin and which marked Chile’s return to democracy.

Leddy’s confession occurred last week, within the framework of the appeal process for the sentence of five years and one day in prison, issued by the presiding judge, Hugo Dolmestch, at the end of July, as confirmed to El Mostrador.cl by plaintiff lawyer Nelson Caucoto, who valued the fact because in the Army, in his opinion, there are “misunderstood” loyalties.

"El Burro" shifts blame In his appeal, “El Burro” Leddy shifts responsibility to the then-chief of the CNI at the time, General (Ret.) Gustavo Abarzúa, who does not appear as a defendant in the case, but, according to the background information in the case, should clarify whether he gave a large sum of money to Leddy to carry out the assassination.

It must be remembered that both he and Leddy had to leave the Army due to the so-called La Cutufa case, which was in turn linked to the death of the gastronomic businessman Aurelio Sichel.

The high-ranking retired officer, who acknowledged having “hidden information from the court” about the crime, was sentenced along with Colonel (Ret.) Pedro Guzmán Olivares; Colonel (Ret.) Jaime Norambuena; Captain (Ret.) Luis Sanhueza Ross; Captain (Ret.) Silvio Corsini; and Major Manuel Allende Tello.

Guzmán and Olivares received three years of remitted sentences, while for Norambuena and Corsini the judge issued a sentence of two years in prison, and the last defendant, Allende Tello, was sentenced to only 541 days.

The sentences are the last issued by Dolmestch in his role as a judge of the Santiago Court of Appeals, since, as is known, he left the case to assume the position of Minister of the Supreme Court.

Long process As will be remembered, Leddy Araneda, nicknamed “El Burro” for his stubbornness, was the replacement for Alvaro Corbalán in the Metropolitan Brigade of the CNI after the homicides of Operation Albania in June 1987, and until now he has not appeared linked to any other bloody event that occurred during the military dictatorship.

Dolmestch issued the first indictments in the case in 2003, after 14 years of investigation, which was largely in the hands of the former president of the Santiago Court of Appeals, Alfredo Pfeiffer, who issued repeated temporary dismissals in February 1990, December 1991, October 1994, and August 1995.

Source: elmostrador.cl, August 16, 2006

Minister Solís summons former DINE director to testify

General (Ret.) Gustavo Abarzúa Rivadeneira, former director of the National Intelligence Center (CNI), must testify in the coming days before the visiting minister Alejandro Solís, who summoned him to provide testimony within the framework of the process investigating the death of General Carlos Prats.

The proceeding, which is in addition to others already decreed, aims to gather information regarding the alleged files of the DINA and the CNI that were reportedly hidden in the facilities of the DINE, according to some testimonies received by the Justice system.

Abarzúa was the last director of the CNI, and when it was dissolved in 1990, he went on to head the Army Intelligence Directorate (DINE).

Solís opened a new line of investigation in the process after Brigadier (Ret.) Pedro Espinoza recently handed him a confidential and authentic document that Colonel (Ret.) Juan Morales Salgado sent in June 1974 to General (Ret.) Manuel Contreras. In it, there is a detailed record of the activities that Prats carried out in Buenos Aires, months before he was assassinated along with his wife.

Initially, Espinoza told the judge that he obtained said document from one of the DINE files in 2004, but later changed his version and asserted that an official from that department had sent it to him.

Regardless of the origin of the document, the minister visited the facilities of the military organization on July 12, but found no signs of the alleged files. On that occasion, the current director, General Ricardo Ortega, asserted that he had no information on such reports, and that since 2004, when he assumed the position, he has not kept or hidden any documents.

Other proceedings

But the judge will continue to investigate, and for this purpose, he also summoned the former CNI civilian agent and former legal advisor to the DINE, René Alegría, who in a statement within the framework of the Tucapel Jiménez case, asserted to Minister Sergio Muñoz that at least the CNI files were moved to the DINE facilities, because he himself had to transport part of that material.

Likewise, Solís requested that the current head of the DINE, Ricardo Ortega, send him a list of all the directors of the organization from 1987 onwards, among other reports.

According to sources close to the process, once that document arrives, the judge could determine new interrogations in order to clarify the whereabouts of the CNI documents, which by law should have been passed to the Army.

Source: emol.cl, July 31, 2007

Germán Palominos Lamas in memory

Today marks 35 years since the treacherous assassination in Pisagua of the young socialist militant, only twenty-five years old, Germán Palominos Lamas, which occurred on a fateful December 1, 1973. Germán Palominos had been detained on September 23, 1973, and held first in the torture center inside the Iquique Telecommunications regiment, from where he was subsequently transferred to Pisagua.

In the Pisagua Prisoner Camp, in his capacity as a cabinetmaker, the jailers assigned him to various tasks of his trade. This continued until November 29, 1973, when the War Council was carried out, subjecting thirty political prisoners held in the place to a sham judicial process.

The War Council met that day, composed of Lieutenant Colonel Luis Valenzuela Solís de Ovando, Major Jorge Feliú Madinogoitia, Major Sergio Parra Valladares, Captain Florencio Tejos Martínez, Captain Hugo Elzo Lagreze, and Lieutenant Enrique Rosales E.

Also participating regularly in these pseudo-tribunals were the prosecuting attorney Mario Acuña Riquelme and the war auditor Major Enrique Cid Coubles.

This War Council dictated various prison and relegation sentences, and for some prisoners who were not convicted, the auditor noted the indication “no resolution.”

But it happens that General Carlos Forestier regularly visited the Pisagua prisoner camp, and when he did, they were days of terrifying uncertainty for everyone. And this was one of those fateful days when the fearsome helicopter that brought him from Iquique landed, accompanied by Captain Sergio Espinoza Davies, and they headed to the camp command.

On that occasion, the infamous prosecutor Mario Acuña, a civilian invested with the shoulder straps of a lieutenant colonel, informed him of the results of the recent War Council: -“My General, I inform you of the result of the War Council convictions.”

• “And these ones that are marked?” asks the general.
• “There were two prisoners without conviction.”

-“Who are they?” asks Forestier. -“They are Luis Fuentes and Germán Palominos, my General.” -“That Fuentes is a little bird who has no idea, I know him. And that Palominos, what charges does he have?” -“The only thing is that Palominos is an agitator,” replies Acuña. -“That Palominos must be eliminated to serve as a warning!” Forestier snaps coldly. -“At your command, my General,” replied Acuña, standing at attention and turning with a click of his boots.

Acuña leaves the office to carry out the change of sentences as ordered by Forestier. In the redone sentence, Germán Palominos appears this time condemned to the death penalty.

Also implicated in the execution of Germán Palominos are the then-Lieutenants Gustavo Abarzúa Rivadeneira, Conrado García Giaier, Carlos Irigoyen Lafuente, and Enrique Rosales.

The case of the assassination of Germán Palominos Lamas continues without any convictions for his assassins. Some of these criminals are deceased, and others wander freely through the streets of this country.

The mother of this young political prisoner passed away dragging the pain of this injustice and for having had a son taken from her in this way, whose body they never even returned, and it was only possible for her to bury him when we located him in the Pisagua grave in 1990.

As we said, this is one of the thousands of crimes committed under the Pinochet dictatorship and without punishment. But by reclaiming the dignified memory of these heroes of the social struggle of the Chilean people, we contribute to further diminishing the unhappy necks of their assassins and the moral rot of the supporters of that ignominious tyranny that Pinochet headed.

Epifanio Flores

Source: December 1, 2008

Public Letter: The family of Jecar Neghme will denounce the impunity of his assassins before the Inter-American Court

To public opinion

We are sisters of JECAR NEHGME CRISTI, assassinated at 28 years of age, a son, militant and leader of the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR), a renowned leader of the Chilean left, and a prominent fighter for democracy and socialism.

He was assassinated by active-duty Army officials: Pedro Guzmán Olivares, Luis Sanhueza Ross, Jaime Norambuena Aguilar, Manuel Allende Tello, and Silvio Corssini Escárate, who, under the orders of Brigadier Enrique Leddy Araneda and General Gustavo Abarzúa, shot him at point-blank range with 18 bullets on the night of September 4, 1989.

For the second time, together with our mother, we had to face the crime of a member of our family at the hands of the Dictatorship. Indeed, already in October 1973, the military had executed my father, JECAR NEHGME CORNEJO, 32 years old, 3 children, militant and leader of the Socialist Party.

On January 28, our family was once again the victim of an attack: The criminal chamber of the Supreme Court, composed of ministers NIBALDO SEGURA, RUBÉN BALLESTEROS, CARLOS KÜNSEMÜLLER, and the participating lawyers JUAN CARLOS CÁRCAMO and ÓSCAR HERRERA, unanimously issued a final ruling granting freedom to the criminals. They applied the following “sentences”:

Brigadier Enrique Leddy Araneda: 5 years of SUPERVISED RELEASE.

Colonel Pedro Javier Guzmán Olivares: 3 years, REMITTED SENTENCE. Captain Luis Arturo Sanhueza Ross: 3 years, REMITTED SENTENCE. Colonel Jaime Eduardo Norambuena Aguilar: 2 years, REMITTED SENTENCE. Major Manuel Allende Tello: 541 days, REMITTED SENTENCE. Captain Silvio Corsini Escárate: 2 years, REMITTED SENTENCE. General Gustavo Abarzúa Rivadeneira: No conviction.

We can only express our indignation, rage, and helplessness at this decision that rewards criminals. It is a final ruling, “divine and unassailable,” since there is no recourse to examine its legality.

Surely today these Ministers will receive the tacit or express thanks of the assassins and their superiors and the congratulations of their lawyers for such a precious “conviction.” Furthermore, the ruling will be appreciated by the right and the Concertación for contributing to “democracy” by guaranteeing “social peace.”

But know that social peace is built on justice, and the triumph you celebrate today is ephemeral, because you have obtained it through an unjust determination that does not withstand any analysis. You have transgressed minimum standards of justice, even if it bears the signature of the highest court.

Indeed, the gentlemen Ministers of the Criminal Chamber have issued a ruling absolutely devoid of impartiality, privileging the criminals and denying justice to the relatives. The gentlemen Nibaldo Segura and Rubén Ballesteros, Judges of the Dictatorship who continue to occupy these positions thanks to an ossified appointment mechanism that privileges political compromises between the Concertación and the Right, should, for a minimum of ethics, abstain from intervening in these cases.

However, every day they continue to set more assassins free.

These arbitrary decisions further muddy the Judiciary, which enjoys little credibility before the citizenry, because between cases of corruption and decisions like these, which protect the most powerful, they are condemning those affected to seek their own paths of conflict resolution.

In this search, Jecar and the thousands of executed and disappeared “are in good health.” Their likeness is strengthened in injustice. They are present in the streets, in the factory, in the classrooms, in the Mapuche communities, in the struggles of workers and residents.

Our dead are an example of life, they are heroes, they are the hope of a different life. And while the powerful dispute positions, cameras, votes, and enjoy excellent salaries, we, thousands of men and women in different parts of the country, day by day, silently, build the future.

And just as yesterday we had the capacity and the courage to end the Dictatorship, tomorrow we will be capable of moving forward united again to definitively conquer the justice that has been stolen from us.

To our companions, friends, and all the people who have accompanied us on this long road, we confirm that we do not forget JECAR, nor do we forgive the criminals. We will denounce this unjust decision before the Inter-American Court. We invite everyone not to falter, to convert this rage into denunciation, to keep going, because we have the certainty that this situation must and will change.

Source: Public Letter: January 30, 2009

Patricio Castro, the mastermind behind the illegal financial firm “La Cutufa”

“La Cutufa” began its operations in the mid-80s and was one of the first financial scandals to implicate agents of the dictatorship. Patricio Castro, a former member of the CNI, was the visible face and the person responsible for the operation of the illegal financial firm that defrauded military personnel and civilians in a multi-million dollar business that promised irrational dividends for the time.

A series of events turned this into a cursed case: the murder of a businessman that was never clarified, the strange suicide of the judge who investigated it, and the trail of the former CNI operations chief, Álvaro Corbalán Castilla.

Witnesses, investigators, and Castro, its protagonist, recall today how a financial crime as old as the "con man's tale" allowed for a glimpse into the inner workings of Pinochet's political police. The event inspired chapter 8 of Los Archivos del Cardenal. By Pablo Basadre

Army Captain (Ret.) Patricio Castro Muñoz has not lost his taste for luxury. The former CNI agent, who became known as one of the masterminds of the illegal financial firm “La Cutufa,” walks around today in a modern sports car almost as luxurious as the red Porsche he gifted to his former partner, actress Carolina Arregui, when she was a judge at the Viña del Mar Festival in the 90s.

Castro is a frequent visitor to the exclusive restaurants Kilometro0 and Coquinaria, located on Isidora Goyenechea, one of the most expensive streets in Santiago. He continues to wear designer clothing, just as he did during the dictatorship, when he would show off his Rolex President watch at the Oliver and Confetti bars, where CNI members celebrated the success of their operations.

But, back then, his salary as a military officer was not enough to afford the life he had always aspired to. Although his wife at the time enjoyed an excellent economic situation, Castro’s friends recall that he had a tendency toward "social climbing" and that he spent more than his wallet allowed.

While he was a CNI agent, for example, he presented himself as “Felipe Errázuriz,” passing himself off as a businessman. It was not a cover name like those used by members of the intelligence agency to commit crimes and leave no traces. For Castro, it had another purpose: he used that name to conduct business and in his extramarital affairs in the upper-class neighborhood of Santiago.

Those who investigated and knew him remember him as an ambitious and ostentatious guy who would pay the bill for friends and acquaintances at restaurants and bars. He even still boasts that in a single night, in the 80s, he managed to spend 10,000 dollars, equivalent to more than five million pesos today.

According to a friend, he liked “the easy life. [Obtaining] The maximum return, but with a minimum effort.”

For this reason, in 1983, Castro was dazzled when he first heard the story of a former classmate from the Military School who was achieving the miracle of multiplying the money entrusted to him in stock market investments.

The legend, which circulated by word of mouth, went like this: then-Lieutenant Gastón Ramos Cid had gathered a group of comrades-in-arms and had urged them to create a pool of money to invest, with the promise of juicy dividends. “The System,” as “La Cutufa” was known in its beginnings, was capable of delivering interest of 10% at a time when banks offered 3% per transaction.

Pandora’s Box

The “La Cutufa” scandal, which had been operating since at least 1983, broke out in 1989 with the murder of Aurelio Sichel and when the press began to link the crime to the illegal financial firm. The amounts it managed to handle remain unclear to this day, as many of those defrauded did not file complaints so as not to appear publicly involved in the scandal.

The investigation, curiously, did not delve into the aspect of the affected civilians. According to El Mercurio, the checks seized by the visiting minister Marcos Libedinsky upon closing the summary in July 1992 totaled 2.747 billion pesos of that time.

It was proven, for example, that those affected from the Army lost around 480 million pesos. The investigation also put the number of “investors” at 337.

For the police officers who investigated the case, “La Cutufa” meant much more than the simple pedaling of a financial “bicycle.” In the midst of the bounced checks and the supposed returns that were being delivered, the feared CNI appeared.

Thus, by unraveling the investigation, they gained access to the real names of its agents, their ties of friendship, the places they frequented, and their nocturnal habits. All of these were data that at the time were very difficult to obtain, due to the pact of silence among those who were involved in human rights violations.

This is how the former head of Internal Affairs of the Investigative Police, Luis Henríquez, remembers it today, explaining that the case allowed for obtaining valuable information that, until that moment, was residual or false: “With this investigation, we began to access military personnel and the CNI. We also realized that they were no longer untouchable.”

“La Cutufa” also brought with it a homicide that remains unsolved to this day: that of the Italian gastronomic businessman Silvio Aurelio Sichel, one of the financial firm’s investors who had threatened its members with publicly denouncing them. Sichel—owner of the well-known restaurant El Rodizzio, a place where CNI members frequently met—was murdered on July 19, 1989.

The Con Man’s Tale

It was in the first half of the 80s when then-Lieutenant Gastón Ramos created “The System.” His “entrepreneurship” quickly began to grow and multiply.

The operation of the illegal financial firm was simple. As journalist María Eugenia Camus relates in her book La Cutufa, su historia secreta, published in July 2001, each client was given a check with a 30-day term for the amount of money deposited, plus the high interest promised as profit.

The logic indicated that clients should withdraw their money when it had increased. And if they held out, that same capital could even double. When that happened, the check was renewed, and so on. A bicycle.

In 1985, Ramos reunited with Captain Patricio Castro. And there he convinced him to join the system. The first sum that Castro contributed was, according to him, one million pesos, which he accumulated to obtain more profits.

Shortly after, he told Gastón Ramos that he had several people interested in investing. That was how he quickly went from client to recruiter, also earning high sums in commissions.

The financial firm had a sophisticated and “reliable” story about its investment portfolio: they were going to a company that used them to pay VAT, and also to buy Chilean foreign debt promissory notes and bonds in Argentina for the same purposes, which were traded on the New York Stock Exchange.

In addition, they financed personal loans to large farmers and companies like Soprole. Stories that the subsequent investigation took it upon itself to disprove.

In an interview with the author, journalist María Eugenia Camus says that the financial firm little by little began to branch out into the heart of the Army, into the School of Non-Commissioned Officers, the War Academy, and among different classes of various military units.

To give it greater credibility, she recalls, the rumor indicated that not only did members of the high command have their money there, but also renowned “Chicago Boys,” the civilian technocrats who devised the thriving neoliberal economic system established during the dictatorship.

It did not take long for Patricio Castro to become a premium commission agent for Gastón Ramos and his financial firm. “The business didn’t have ads in the newspaper; it was by personal contact or through third parties.

Word-of-mouth comments. My office was a briefcase,” recalls Castro while sipping a pisco sour at the Coquinaria restaurant on Isidora Goyenechea street. At 56, Castro shows some gray hairs in the little hair he has left, but he retains the poise of those times, which he did not lose even when he faced the press cameras once everything was uncovered.

That briefcase Castro refers to is not a metaphor. Journalist María Eugenia Camus recalls that it was leather, with a combination lock, and that it held a notebook where Castro wrote down the names of the savers, the money invested, and the profits of each client. The same thing that Ramos, the ideologue of “The System,” had done before.

After being arrested in November 1990, Castro denied any link to the financial firm. Even today, he claims to have been just another victim of his partner Gastón Ramos. Despite this, he recalls what the client recruitment process was like. “First, I had to be in a good place, elegantly dressed, smelling good so that with a glance I could convince you.” If the place was a restaurant, he would ask for the menu and the most expensive drinks.

Almost always Chivas Regal. “You had to have good diction because it’s a simple thing: if you have a million, you can earn a million 100. If you have more people, you can earn a percentage. That’s how it started. And my own friends would bring people,” he explains while sitting, this time in a lounge at the Crowne Plaza Hotel bar.

The accounts in the complaints that were filed after the case exploded coincide in this modus operandi of Castro to sell this “con man’s tale.” Castro presented himself to his recruiters as someone with great business acumen. At the beginning, the committed amounts were smaller. As the profit was “realized,” the “investors” increased their contribution.

Manuel Alberto Gaete Gaete, a retiree from the Armed Forces, learned of the existence of “The System” and in September 1989 wanted to try his luck. Castro convinced him to invest 250,000 pesos. In exchange, he gave him a check for 90 days, with the deposit plus the promised interest.

Since the first check was cashed without problems, the retiree visited Castro again, but this time with 12 million pesos from an inheritance. The procedure was repeated. Some time later, when Gaete deposited the document, it was protested for a non-payment order.

Like this case, there are hundreds in the judicial process. One of them is that of the singer Miguel Piñera, brother of former President Sebastián Piñera. In 1989, apparently in August, “Negro” gave Castro 18 million pesos, with the commitment of a monthly interest of between 5% and 8%.

Castro warned him to notify him fifteen days in advance if he wanted the amount back. When the singer began to demand his money and deposited one of the checks that Castro had given him, the document was returned with “discrepant signature.” To save the situation, Castro gave him a car but without the documents that allowed for the vehicle’s transfer.

Finally, Piñera received a percentage of the El Rodizzio restaurant, of which Castro was the owner, and thus recovered his investment.

But not everyone had the same luck. A waiter from El Rodizzio appears testifying in the process. At the beginning, according to the waiter, everything worked: he obtained monthly dividends from his initial investment of 300,000 pesos. But shortly after, when he wanted to deposit the checks, they were protested.

“Ramos started with the system, but Castro, with his exuberant personality, ended up keeping the whole business,” recalls former police officer Luis Henríquez.

Castro’s next step was to change the name of the financial firm. At a moment that the judicial process does not clarify, nor that Castro himself remembers, it went from being called “The System” to “La Cutufa” in honor of his favorite Saint Bernard dog, “Patufa.” The plaintiffs recount that they found out about its existence at social gatherings, birthdays, and weddings. “La Cutufa” even had clients in the regions.

Hundreds of military personnel saw in it a way to increase their low incomes. Others ended up placing their retirement funds and severance pay, which they ultimately lost.

Camus says that in the judicial investigation, Libedinsky gathered 30,000 checks as evidence, mostly protested or with a non-payment order. Of those, Castro only recognizes 1,500. But he also says: “A checkbook of 100 would last me 15 days.”

The CNI and Sichel

Even while in the CNI, Castro did not stop in his task of recruiting clients for the illegal financial firm. At that time, he also had an active nightlife and social life. Although he was married to Lucía Campeny, daughter of a wealthy owner of several bakeries, he continued to flirt outside his marriage. That was how in 1984 he met a sister of the businessman Silvio Aurelio Sichel Garcés.

Using the cover name “Felipe Errázuriz,” he was very well-received by the family. He quickly became a friend and partner of Sichel, owner of the El Rodizzio restaurant. But the deception of his name did not last long.

Sichel, however, did not care about his identity, much less that he was from the CNI. Aurelio, a good-looking Italian, karateka, athlete, and womanizer, felt admiration for everything that smelled of dictatorship, and that included Pinochet’s political police.

Castro recalls that Sichel “wanted to get into a car with a beacon and siren, he wanted to see an intelligence barracks from the inside. He wanted to meet Álvaro Corbalán. He wanted to meet Humberto Gordon [director of the CNI between 1980 and 1986]. He wanted to meet Pinochet. And what better link than with me. I had access to all of that.”

That was how the agent took little time to create a strong bond with the gastronomic businessman. As was natural, he introduced him to Gastón Ramos and Sichel learned of the existence of “La Cutufa.” The Italian wanted to invest.

And when his wife, Isabel Margarita Pizarro, warned him to be careful, Sichel argued that it was a reliable system, since the clients were economists, businessmen, and members of the Army high command.

“Aurelio went crazy with everything Castro brought with him. The dictatorship, the CNI, ‘La Cutufa,’ his character, everything,” says a friend of Sichel who prefers to keep his name confidential.

By the end of 1986, “Pelao”—as those close to him called Aurelio Sichel—already had the franchise to set up the El Rodizzio restaurant in Apoquindo (the first was in Bellavista). He was sure of his success and time proved him right: his establishment became a gold mine. Also a place where the CNI spent the nights after operations, in the times when the rest of the country lived under curfew.

His friendship with Castro tightened to the point that in 1987 he offered him to be a partner in his restaurant and share tasks. Castro had decided to leave the Army and dedicate himself entirely to business.

The duo came to have such complicity that they rented an apartment in the upper sector of the capital, where they took their fleeting conquests. Castro drank vodka tonic and Sichel, who was an athlete, sometimes allowed himself to have caipirinhas. “On any given day they would go to a car dealership and each would come out driving a Mercedes Benz without looking at the price,” says the friend of Sichel cited above.

El Rodizzio even had a branch in Viña del Mar. The CNI operations chief, Álvaro Corbalán, arrived there. And Corbalán became friends with Sichel, invited him to parties at his house, while the Italian asked his waiters to save the meat scraps from his restaurant so that Corbalán could take them to the dogs that guarded his house in the exclusive sector of El Arrayán, in Lo Barnechea.

While Sichel was hallucinating with Corbalán’s offer to become a karate instructor for Avanzada Nacional—the nascent party that the CNI chief led from the shadows—Castro had turned the El Rodizzio in Apoquindo into his office to promote “La Cutufa.”

According to María Eugenia Camus’s book, Castro had become selective. By late 1987, he already had about 300 clients (he would attend to up to 20 per night) and did not accept investments of less than one million pesos.

He would summon them to the restaurant, where attractive women drank whiskey opened especially for the occasion with the potential new “investors.” After all those attentions, Castro had nothing left to do but open the briefcase and write down the names and amounts of his brand-new “partners.” Castro does not remember with precision the money he earned, but he acknowledges that it could border on 9 million pesos per month of that time.

Even more.

It was never proven if Corbalán had any relationship with “La Cutufa,” although Castro says it would have been impossible because of how “stingy” he was. But the truth is that at that time the CNI operations chief had also thought about starting a business and received a loan from the Banco del Estado, presided over by the late economist Álvaro Bardón, for one million dollars and without conditions.

With that money, Corbalán created the transport company Santa Bárbara, which would be dedicated to transporting—with 20 Volvo trucks—copper tailings from Chuquicamata and El Salvador. The subsequent fraudulent bankruptcy of the company was, like “La Cutufa,” one of the first financial scandals carried out by Pinochet’s agents.

In Sichel’s family environment, there was always the doubt of whether the businessman was ever linked to Corbalán’s company, who never appeared in the deeds because he used “straw men.”

By then, according to what Camus says in her book, Sichel had become so close to Corbalán that he once took him to a Pinochet act at the La Tortuga stadium in Talcahuano, where he was able to be a bodyguard for a day and fulfill his dream.

Castro recalls that, on occasions, General Pinochet organized dinners and Sichel did everything possible to please him. “He would put on a bow tie and bring El Rodizzio to his home,” he recalls.

Little by little, the CNI and “La Cutufa” began to relate more and more. In the process, the intelligence agency appeared as a main actor in the financial firm. Thus, the detectives who investigated together with Minister Libedinsky had access to names like that of General Gustavo Abarzúa, the last director of the CNI, a close collaborator of Pinochet and an investor in “La Cutufa.” Within the list, first as a client and then as a recruiter, also appeared Enrique Cowell, who had been part of the DINA general staff and held positions in the CNI.

The name of General Jerónimo Pantoja, deputy director of the CNI, also emerged, who was linked to the director of the DINA, Manuel Contreras. Another illustrious client was Enrique Leddy, head of the CNI in the regions.

In 2009, Leddy was convicted for the crime of MIR spokesperson Jécar Neghme. And Patricio Castro himself, who to this day is accused by the relatives of MIR leaders Rogelio Tapia and Raúl Jaime Barrientos for his alleged responsibility in their murders, in the so-called Operation Alfa Carbón 1 or Albania Sur, background information that to this day justice has not proven.

In those times, according to a publication by CiperChile, Castro acted with the cover names “B.J.,” José Luis Sierra Alta Suárez, or Juan Pablo Letelier. From his CNI days, socialists Ricardo Solari, Marcelo Schilling, and Ricardo Lagos also have memories.

The first two have stated that they were detained and interrogated by him, while the office of the now former President was raided by Castro in the 80s.

One of the many theories that were handled at that time was that “La Cutufa” had been created by CNI agents to ensure a comfortable retirement in case of the end of the dictatorship.

The Murder of the Businessman

Castro did not stop. In Sichel’s restaurant, he would open his briefcase at 12 midnight and close it at 6 in the morning. “With El Rodizzio at my back, with that infrastructure it had, who wouldn’t believe you?” says Castro today.

But the gastronomic businessman began to dislike that. To settle the problem, they agreed that Castro would have an office in front of the establishment, in the Caracol VIP’S in Apoquindo. All in all, things between them had already soured, to the point that in March 1989 they dissolved their partnership. Patricio Castro remained the owner of the Rodizzio in Apoquindo.

Sichel sniffed that the night would fall on the military. The dictatorship had lost the 1988 plebiscite and the December 1989 presidential election was approaching, for which Patricio Aylwin was emerging as the clear favorite against a weakened Hernán Büchi, the regime’s candidate.

In Sichel’s eyes, “La Cutufa” had operated under the protection of the Army. If the regime was going to lose power, it was time to demand back his investment and his profits in the illegal financial firm.

To this day, it is not known how much money Sichel invested in “La Cutufa,” but it was said that he was one of the clients who had contributed the most capital. Unofficial figures spoke of 200 million pesos, although justice later established that the amount did not exceed 50 million.

But Sichel began to have difficulties recovering his money. His wife asked him to write it off as a loss and start new ventures. But he was stubborn. He had told Isabel Margarita that he would demand every last peso invested.

That said, there was a difficulty: neither the ideologue of La Cutufa, Gastón Ramos, nor the one who had become his friend and partner, Patricio Castro, would answer his phone calls. Sichel then had a meeting with Corbalán.

Ten days before being murdered, he received a summons from the CNI operations chief, who contacted him through one of his bodyguards. Isabel Margarita never found out the tenor of the talk with the “Pharaoh,” as they called Corbalán, but she noticed that her husband was worried.

She chose to go with her children to rest at the seaside resort of El Tabo and Sichel stayed alone at his house in Santiago.

To whoever would listen, Sichel said that he had imposed an ultimatum. If they didn’t give him his money in 48 hours, he would talk. He would not only reveal the operation of the “system,” but he would tell the press details about CNI operations that he had heard at the tables of his restaurant.

According to María Eugenia Camus’s book, Sichel had had in his possession a tape where one of those operations appeared and he was willing to denounce it.

The same night he died, July 19, 1989, 24 hours had already passed since his fatal deadline had expired. That day he met with Castro and one of his closest friends. The meeting was strange. They got together to eat, but Castro seemed in a hurry, uncomfortable: he ordered a drink and left quickly.

Hours later, when the Italian returned to close El Rodizzio, he talked to his friend and told him to go together to his plot in Casas Viejas, on the way to Las Vizcachas, but he replied that he couldn’t.

Sichel arrived home in the early morning. He got out of his Mercedes Benz model 280 to open the gate and at 05:30 hours he was attacked from behind. Strangely, the caretaker who lived on the same land was not there.

His fierce dogs were tied up and did not come out to greet him. The four shots he received were not heard. The weapons used had silencers. The newspapers of the time reported that Sichel had received a shot in the back, another in the nape of the neck, and two in the thorax.

The newspaper La Época linked Sichel to the CNI and Avanzada Nacional.

Weeks later, the idea began to emerge, little by little, that the crime could be linked to an illegal financial firm. Sichel was, according to the media, one of the majority partners.

Killing “in Threes”

Former police officer Luis Henríquez maintains that several clues suggested that the CNI’s fingerprints were on the crime, which could never be proven. However, he recalls that one of the informants who collaborated with the police at that time, former agent Francisco Zúñiga, “El Gurka,” had told him that the CNI usually killed with three agents.

Known for his cruelty with detainees, Zúñiga knew what he was talking about: he had participated in different operations, such as the murder of the carpenter Juan Alegría Mondaca in Valparaíso, in 1983, and Operation Albania, in 1987. “The one who shoots first says ‘I didn’t kill him, I left him wounded.’ The second says ‘I shot at someone who was already wounded.’ And the third says ‘I shot at a corpse.’ And that’s how they operated,” says Henríquez.

In 1991, “El Gurka” Zúñiga was found dead, with a gunshot to the head, which was attributed to suicide.

With the help of his lawyer, Gastón Ureta, in a short time the widow, Isabel Margarita Pizarro, dared to publicly denounce that behind her husband’s death was the CNI. “Sichel walked around armed, had very fierce dogs, was a karateka and a good shooter.

So, it is obvious that the people who approached him were acquaintances, that’s why he didn’t defend himself. Who at that time had the possibility of killing Aurelio Sichel with a weapon with a silencer?” reflects Henríquez.

Hours after the murder, according to the “La Cutufa” process, Castro ordered the desk that Sichel had at the Rodizzio to be broken open, and a CNI team did the same at the businessman’s house in Las Vizcachas.

Thus, the snowball began to fall apart. And upon reading the information in the press, the investors of “La Cutufa” began to call Ramos and Castro to recover their money. The partners, of course, did not answer.

Castro remembers it: “When my friends began to ask me for money to withdraw, I would call Gastón Ramos and he would tell me ‘tomorrowww,’ like the Lucho Jara song. Later I went to see him at his house, I spoke with his wife and she told me that he had gone to turn himself in to the Military Prosecutor’s Office. ‘And why?’ I said to her. ‘Because he owed a lot of money,’ she replied. ‘And mine?’ I asked.”

Sichel’s crime was never clarified and the Army would live through complicated moments. The high command was involved in the illegal financial firm and Pinochet, enraged, ordered a summary that would end with four generals splashed, among them, the former directors of the CNI Hugo Salas Wenzel and Gustavo Abarzúa, in addition to 16 other officers.

In the middle of the investigation, the judge in charge, Mónica Tagle, appeared burned in her car, a Renault 9, four kilometers from Sichel’s plot. It was said that it had been a suicide.

When Castro saw himself cornered, with his partner Ramos confessed, he fled to Paraguay with a false identity. He knew well how his own operated and feared for his life.

It was 1990 and democracy had returned to Chile. Horacio Toro, the new director of Investigations, had among his missions to cut all ties with the CNI, which in turn was dissolved. For the civil police, the capture of Castro was a sort of litmus test: it would demonstrate whether or not it was capable of pursuing, in democracy, agents with whom it had worked closely during the dictatorship.

Lawyer Jorge Morales, former legal advisor to the then-director of Investigations, traveled with the police delegation to look for Castro in Paraguay. In Asunción, Morales recalls, the authorities told them that the former agent would be expelled and that they would bring him back to Chile on a commercial flight.

Castro traveled with a wig and was taken out of the airport in the middle of an operation to distract the press. “In addition to the need to bring him in for the investigation, it had a symbolic value: there was a capacity of the Chilean State to investigate serious crimes and to detain people who appeared involved in them, serious crimes associated with the dictatorship,” recalls Morales.

The case would end with several officers prosecuted, among them Castro and Ramos, for violation of the General Banking Law. In 1998, when the Supreme Court rejected the appeals filed by Castro, it confirmed the sentence and sentenced him to three years and one day (it recognized the 343 days he had been in prison).

The Agent Recycles Himself

After serving the sentence, five years after La Cutufa exploded as a scandal, Patricio Castro set up a minimarket in a neighborhood in Rinconada de Maipú. That is where he was met, in the mid-90s, by the former head of the Human Rights Brigade of the PDI, Sandro Gaete, when he was working as a detective in a procedure due to a robbery that the retired captain had suffered.

“It caught our attention because he completely handled the situation, he ordered the carabineros how they had to proceed. He was angry and was arrogant, he was very upset. I remember that in today’s money they stole about 50 million pesos from him,” says Gaete. The amount surprised the detectives, since the minimarket was in a lower-middle-class area and was very poorly stocked.

Gaete recalls that he began to ask questions to find out the origin of the money, but Castro became enraged: he gave him a card with the title of retired military officer. “That’s where I made the link with ‘La Cutufa’ and I was able to understand his annoyance at the questions we were asking him,” says Gaete.

In 2004, Castro would get entangled with justice again, in a case called by the press “La Cutufa II,” of similar operation. Two years later, he was also involved in the noisy Publicam case, of sales of false invoices for the rendering of electoral expenses.

Castro, as his friend and lawyer in some cases, Marcelo Jadue, acknowledges, was close to Juan Meyerholz, the mastermind of the company involved and to whom Castro would exchange checks.

Jadue knows him well. He was his lawyer for years and a witness to the day he tried to enter the courts in the trunk of a car. That was how he wanted to evade the arrest of the detectives who were following him, when he was a fugitive after being granted bail for “La Cutufa II.” Strictly speaking, Castro should have remained in prison for the “La Cutufa” case, since he had not paid an indemnity.

Gaete, who participated in that operation, recalls that the former CNI agent wanted to avoid the filing process, with the taking of fingerprints and photos. But the judge became so enraged with his ruse that he himself handed him over to the detectives, so that he would comply with the procedure.

Jadue says that his friend has always been a freeloader. They would go out together to the former cabaret Maeba, in Vitacura, and spend fortunes. “Between 90 and 2000 were the most intense years. We didn’t think about anything other than partying.

I lived alone and so did he. We both had good incomes. We spent a lot of money,” recalls Jadue, who ended up admitted to a clinic to treat his addiction to drugs and alcohol. To illustrate the life they led, the lawyer makes a simile with Martin Scorsese’s latest film, The Wolf of Wall Street.

But time has passed and Castro assures that he is no longer the same. Today, together with his partner, with whom he has a 20-year age difference, he lives on a plot in Colina and has a security and cleaning company. He says he only goes out on Fridays and until three in the morning sharp. His body, he explains, no longer tolerates late nights like those of the dictatorship.

Detective Sandro Gaete, who has not seen him for years, believes that Castro’s great difference from other CNI agents is an empathy that allows him to seduce people. “I saw that in the abrupt changes he had in his personality. He could go very quickly from annoyance to a friendly, really charming, nice treatment. A skill that others don’t have. Typical of a con man.”

Source: casosvicaria.udp.cl