Civil employee of the DINA. Accountant for Pesquera Chile, a trusted associate of Luis Humberto Olavarria Aranguren, Financial Chief of the DINA. Partner and administrator of the Sociedad Pedro Diet Lobos, a front company for the DINA used to cover activities both within Chile and abroad.

Source: Revista Analisis No 282

On Thursday, November 12, at 11 in the morning, Alfredo Ovalle, then president of Sonami, received CIPER at the trade association's headquarters. We asked for his version regarding this investigation into the DINA's secret funds, which links him as a partner in national and foreign companies to the financial chief of the repressive agency: the former Navy officer, Humberto Olavarría Aranguren.

Ovalle also appears associated with Guillermo Endara, former president of Panama (1990-1994), who established multiple DINA companies in his country to finance Operation Condor. Ovalle listened and refused to speak on the subject.

He gave his answer seven days later when he unexpectedly resigned from the presidency of Sonami, nine months before finishing his term, citing personal reasons. This is the investigation that unveils an unpublished chapter about the men and companies that financed the repression in Chile.

May 14, 1992. Once again, retired General Manuel Contreras and the visiting judge Adolfo Bañados are face to face. The former head of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) came prepared to continue denying any participation by himself or the security agency in the assassination of Orlando Letelier.

He was unaware that the judge had a surprise for him: a thick file of notarized deeds for DINA companies, which the author of this investigation handed to the judge before publishing them (*1). It was then that Contreras was forced to abandon his script.

“At the beginning, the DINA did not maintain checking accounts in dollars. Later, yes, perhaps a few months after its incorporation… I do not remember the bank in the United States, but I have personally maintained an account at the Riggs Bank in Washington from which I withdrew 25 thousand dollars, a contribution from my American friends for my defense in the extradition case,” he declared.

“Regarding the deeds that are brought to my attention, I acknowledge that Hubert Fuchs and Marco Acuña Ramos were related to the DINA; the former was the manager of the fishing company of which I was coordinator and in which Humberto Olavarría provided me with advice from the moment he was also the DINA's chief of economic intelligence,” Contreras acknowledged.

The head of the DINA's financial apparatus, Humberto Olavarría Aranguren, a former Navy officer and friend of Contreras, has never been questioned. He has continued doing business in his hometown, Valparaíso, where his office is located very close to the courts.

Olavarría did not have a significant business history when, in 1976, he partnered with lawyers Alfredo Ovalle Rodríguez and Raimundo Langlois Vicuña, with whom he participated in a network of numerous companies (See chronology), most of them created while he controlled the entire financial apparatus of the DINA.

Lawyers Ovalle and Langlois have had only one break in their business career. The former was imprisoned for 42 days in 1982, due to the intervention of the Banco de Fomento del Bío Bío, of which he was president and of which the brothers Humberto and Mario Olavarría were also partners.

After being dismissed, Ovalle continued doing business with his former classmate from the Law School of the Catholic University, Raimundo Langlois, until they became a successful duo in mining investment in the 90s.

In April 1978, together with Gustavo Valenzuela Carey and the Constructora Foram y Compañía Limitada, they formed their first company in the sector: Inversiones Mineras Foram Limitada. Through this company, they would later associate with Humberto Olavarría for an ambitious real estate project in Concepción.

This would be followed in a first stage by the Sociedad Inmobiliaria Cabildo Limitada (1978), the Sociedad Legal Minera Las Cenizas Uno de Cabildo, Inversiones Mineras Norte Limitada (June 1981), the Compañía Minera Las Luces Limitada, and Minera Oro Andino Limitada, in partnership with María Teresa Cañas Pinochet, Pinochet's favorite niece.

Both have recounted that it all began when they acquired the Las Cenizas mine in an Enami tender along with other partners. Whatever the chronological itinerary, the truth is that in 2005, Alfredo Ovalle seemed to have reached the pinnacle when he was elected president of the National Mining Society (Sonami).

But he still had one step to go. A year later, he assumed the position of the top leader of Chilean business, at the head of the Confederation of Production and Commerce (CPC). His first activity as president of the businessmen was to attend the funeral of Augusto Pinochet, the same day of his election.

In the multiple profiles and interviews published about Ovalle, his relationship with the head of the DINA's financial apparatus, Humberto Olavarría, was never mentioned. That is why his surprise when he received CIPER at his Sonami office on November 12.

Ovalle listened and refused to speak for this investigation about the DINA's secret funds. Seven days later, he unexpectedly announced his resignation from the presidency of the mining trade association. “I have reached the conviction that I have an important debt to my family, who has accompanied and supported me in this union work all these years,” was the explanation he gave to the board in a letter.

A fishing holding company of extermination

Humberto Olavarría's businesses started with a low profile. In the 60s, the frigate captain partnered with his brother Mario –father of the current UDI mayor of Colina, Mario Olavarría– to form Olavarría Hermanos Limitada and later the company Viviendas Económicas Traslaviña Limitada.

In March 1973, he turned toward international trade and, together with the Concepción lawyer Aníbal Bórquez Pincheira, founded Cinemaphon Limitada. He also served during those years as vice president of RCA Víctor and recorded a strange business foray into Brazil during the Allende era.

Once the coup d'état was executed, Humberto Olavarría's life changed. The DINA, created by his friend Manuel Contreras, would open the door to power for him by becoming the head of its financial apparatus.

There is no public trace of his participation in the first company created by the DINA, but there is in its development. On January 4, 1974 –when the DINA still had no legal existence but did have the power granted by Pinochet since he created it on November 12, 1973– before notary Andrés Rubio Flores, Servicios Industriales Villar y Reyes Ltda. was born, whose trade name was Dinaservice Ltda.

On February 12, 1974, the incorporation of the company with which the DINA paid its agents' salaries appeared in the Official Gazette. Its capital, 200 thousand escudos; its partners, the Army officer Lautaro Villar Requena (*2) and Leonor Reyes Herrera.

Its purpose: “provision of all kinds of industrial services and, especially, to facilitate specialized mechanical services to third parties, to provide specialized personnel for any kind of industrial work and, in general, the provision of all kinds of services that are directly or indirectly related to industrial activity.”

There was some truth in those purposes. The DINA, in Contreras's plan, sought to become a great industry. But not of services. And in the rush, the lawyers made a mistake that they had to rectify in the Official Gazette of February 14. Leonor, one of the partners of Dinaservices, was actually Leonardo Reyes Herrera, an Air Force officer (*3).

Financing the repression inside and outside the borders of Chile was the task assumed by Olavarría. But his power would be consolidated with the creation of the Lincoyán Brigade (Economic Investigations), which in practice would become an espionage detachment for the private miseries of the businessmen and civilians of the regime, data that went on to thicken the files that Contreras managed to exert pressure at moments of urgency.

On January 25, 1974, before the same previous notary, Andrés Rubio Flores, the first operation was carried out so that the main fishing companies of San Antonio, a fiefdom of Manuel Contreras (he was director of the School of Military Engineers of Tejas Verdes in San Antonio), would legally pass into the hands of the DINA, which already had them under its control.

The deed signed that day left the Compañía Pesquera Arauco, represented by Hubert Fuchs, and Productos Congelados del Mar, represented by Ramón Gutiérrez Burgos, as the only partners of the Compañía Atunera de Chile Limitada, whose new capital was 500 thousand escudos, of which 495 thousand were contributed by Pesquera Arauco.

It was not a coincidence that the same day the DINA had legal existence, by a decree signed by Pinochet (June 18, 1974), the new board of directors of the Empresa Pesquera de Chile (EPECH) was constituted in the port of San Antonio, headed by Manuel Contreras, and of which Hubert Fuchs was already manager.

The trust placed in Fuchs was not strange. A retired sailor, he was manager of Savory and served as a link for the relationship between the DINA and the Standard Electric company.

In 1975, Contreras would initiate the first actions for the coordination of the secret agencies of the Southern Cone dictatorships. His need for funds increased. In March of that year, the DINA's financial network was installed in an office in the heart of Providencia -Doctor Charlin No. 1475- acquiring a new impetus under the leadership of Olavarría, who already had checking accounts in dollars, such as that of the Manufacturer Hannover Trust.

The great premiere of Operation Condor was in Santiago. On November 26, 1975, Contreras gathered the heads of security agencies from Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, and Brazil. All expenses were paid by the DINA.

To set the international anti-subversive network in motion, millions of dollars and a front activity were required, in which the financial apparatus and the DINA's Foreign Department would have a key role (*4).

The Empresa Pesquera Chile (EPECH) would provide a part of the new needs. Shortly before the Condor meeting in Chile, on November 14, 1975, and as always before notary Andrés Rubio Flores, the total transfer of EPECH to the hands of the State was finalized, that is, under the control of the DINA.

Productos Congelados del Mar Ltda. ceded and transferred the entirety of its rights in EPECH to the Sociedad Agrícola Corfo Ltda., upon the condonation of the debt that its owners had with the state entity.

But the design was missing a piece. This was executed on February 28, 1976, when Hubert Fuchs, representing Pesquera Arauco, transferred all its assets in the Compañía Atunera de Chile (99%) to EPECH, of which he was manager. The three fishing companies with all their ships and millions of dollars in assets remained under the tutelage of Manuel Contreras.

It was exactly what Contreras required in those days of close ties with the far-right terrorist groups of Italy (Stefano Delle Chiaie and Pierluigi Concutelli, of the Italian neo-fascist movement Avanguardia Nazionale); with the Novo brothers and Virgilio Paz of the Cuban Nationalist Movement (MNC); the Milicia of Argentina and Vlado Seran, a former Croatian officer and one of the main leaders of the Ustascia movement.

Almost all of them had problems with the justice systems of their countries and had to be provided with money and refuge in Chile in exchange for the new armed branch that the DINA deployed abroad.

Money was also what he needed for his recently created Mulchén Brigade, under the command of Captain Guillermo Salinas, destined to carry out missions of eliminating troublesome individuals, as proven by judges Montiglio, Solís, and Madrid. For this, the DINA's laboratory worked day and night.

-Towards the end of 1975, I dedicated myself almost exclusively to the development of Sarin, the completion of the laboratory here in my house, and the planning of similar products like Soman and Tabun, in addition to products of extreme toxicity like Clostridium botulinum, Saxitoxin, and tetrodotoxin –Michael Townley would confess.

Ovalle's constructions

Before becoming a businessman, the lawyer Alfredo Ovalle was a substitute for the well-known Santiago notary Enrique Morgan Torres. Until in December 1967 he abandoned the deeds for business and joined the construction company Foram.

Four years later, on August 19, 1971, he acquired 10% of Foram Chilena Empresa constructora de Viviendas Económicas, assuming the role of one of its three administrators. The notary Enrique Morgan, the same one for whom he had been a substitute, was chosen by Ovalle to modify the company on May 31, 1974.

Representing G. Valenzuela y Compañía Foram Chilena Limitada, Ovalle signed the capital increase and the designation of its new administrators: Gustavo Valenzuela Rodríguez, Alfredo Ovalle, Raimundo Langlois, and Alberto Miranda.

Five months later, on October 4, before the same notary Morgan, who would certify almost all the multiple movements of Ovalle and his partner Langlois, the new company Ingeniería Foram Proinco Limitada was constituted.

Ovalle appeared representing G. Valenzuela y Compañía Foram Chilena Limitada and his new partners were the engineers Patricio Ruiz Tirado, Antonio Delpiano Puelma, and Daniel Lowener Maron, of the company Proyectos de Ingeniería de Consulta Limitada, whose headquarters were located at Calle Belgrado No. 9, a few meters from the DINA headquarters (Belgrado No. 11).

Shortly after, on January 15, 1975, Humberto Olavarría gave shape –together with his brother and the lawyer Aníbal Bórquez Pincheira– to a company that would multiply: Sociedad Inmobiliaria Regional Limitada. Having started with a capital of 15 thousand escudos, seven months later, a new partner entered the scene, Lionel Raby Laemmermann, and it increased its assets to $77,200.

The years 75 and 76 were of intense activity for the DINA and also for Olavarría. But for the purposes of this story, the next business milestone takes place on August 18, 1976, in the midst of the heyday of the agency headed by Contreras.

That day, notary Morgan was a witness to the first public partnership between Humberto Olavarría, Alfredo Ovalle, and Raimundo Langlois. The three contributed 75% -in equal parts- of the $50,000 with which Comercio Exterior Bío Bío Limitada began its activities.

The rest was contributed by Agustín Benavente Ariztía (former sailor and later manager of the Lo Valledor Slaughterhouse) and G. Valenzuela y Compañía Foram Chilena Limitada. Its administrators: Olavarría, Ovalle, and Langlois.

Twelve days later, Morgan had to assist them for the constitution of a new company. On September 4, 1976, Inversiones y Comercial Sur Limitada (Incosur) was created with an initial capital of $150,000 contributed by Humberto and Mario Olavarría Aranguren (11.11% each); Alfredo Ovalle Rodríguez (12.49%), Raimundo Langlois Vicuña (12.48%), the also lawyer Máximo Montero Labbé (12.48%); Ovalle's partner, Patricio Ruiz Tirado (15.94%); Alejandro Bustos Josseau (13.28%) and the partner of Olavarría and several DINA businesses, Lionel Raby Laemmermann (11.11%).

The partners already had a plan in mind to multiply the funds.

It would be the same notary Morgan who would certify the new business foray of Incosur. On October 13, 1976, the company Comercial y Agroindustrial Octava Región Limitada (Agroctava Ltda.) was constituted.

Partners: Fernando and José Luis Giner Izquierdo, María Teresa Ossa Madrid, Patricio Ossa Pretot, Patricia Ossa Madrid, in addition to Mario Olavarria Aranguren and Alejandro Bustos Josseau, both representing Incosur.

Guillermo Endara enters the scene

When in August 1976 the partnership of Humberto Olavarría and Alfredo Ovalle was made official, a maelstrom prevailed in the DINA's external financial apparatus. The key man in its secret structuring was the Panamanian lawyer Guillermo Endara Gallimany.

On April 22, 1976, Endara gave the go-ahead to the first company of Contreras's Operation Condor. It was in the same days that, as accredited by the justice system in the United States and Chile, sarin gas, manufactured by the chemist Eugenio Berríos in the Lo Curro laboratory, was successfully tested, eliminating a person whose identity is still unknown (*5).

Edice Investment Inc was the name chosen by Endara Gallimany himself for the company that he headed himself to then give total power of representation to the DINA lawyer, Marcos Acuña, an Army officer on active duty.

Four days later, two new Panamanian companies entered the network: South Fishing Corporation and Entrecostera Panatlántica, both presided over by Endara and with identical powers of representation for lawyer Acuña.

Three other Panamanian lawyers attended its constitution: Hernán Delgado Quintero, José Menalco Solís (former Minister of Finance and Treasury and former president of that country's National Security Council), and Ceferino A.

Espino. Endara's firm had specialized in the constitution of companies of dubious origin. The strange thing is that, in these cases, their role as resident lawyers had drifted into that of shareholders of a company that conferred power to a foreigner.

None of the complaints that circulated at the time about the trio prevented Endara from becoming president of his country in 1990 and Delgado from participating from 1982 and for many years in the appointments of the main judicial body of Panama (Public Ministry), becoming an impregnable power.

The business fever that in 1976 shook the DINA's financial apparatus in Panama was also growing in Chile. On May 12, Hubert Fuchs, manager and legal representative of Pesquera Chile and Pesquera Arauco; together with Marcos Acuña, the “representative” of Guillermo Endara, created the Compañía de Inversiones Navarino Limitada.

This time Humberto Olavarría did not hide his imprint. In the deed, he appears as an arbitrator.

The notary office of Andrés Rubio had to enable a special private room because the next day, May 13, the same Fuchs, Acuña, and Olavarría formed Compañía de Inversiones Navarino Limitada y Cia C.P.A (a limited partnership, which is divided into shares).

Something serious happened in those days of May 1976 between the men who kept the secret of the DINA's finances. Because until today it is not known how the lawyer Marcos Acuña, Endara's representative, died in a strange accident.

He died on May 23 after being transferred to the Clínica Santa Lucía, for the exclusive use of the DINA. The same one where months later Corporal Manuel Leyton would be assassinated with sarin, whose authors are already convicted in the first instance. But Acuña's death has not been investigated.

Apparently, Contreras was not willing to let anyone hinder his plans. The abrupt death of Acuña caused the head of the DINA, with the help of Olavarría, to restructure his financial network by adding three new companies in just five days, all constituted in the notary office of Andrés Rubio and with the same partners: Hubert Fuchs Asenjo and Salvador Lisboa Escobar.

On June 24, it was the turn of the modification of the Compañía de Inversiones Navarino Limitada. Two days later, they stamped their signature on the deed of the Importadora y Exportadora E.I.D. Limitada (E.I.D.

Ltda.), to give way on June 29 to the creation of the Sociedad Servicios Electrónicos Limitada (Selectronic Ltda.) and Industrial y Comercial de Refrigeración Limitada (Infricom Ltda.), whose address was established in Concepción. The arbitrator: Humberto Olavarría.

The last company created by Contreras and Olavarría in those days of 1976 was in an unexplored sector: agriculture. On June 30, Salvador Lisboa Escobar and Federico Guerra signed the deed –certainly in the notary office of Andrés Rubio– of Agrícola Agro Claro.

There remained a big problem to solve. With the death of Marcos Acuña, several Panamanian companies were left unusable. Contreras this time did not resort to an intermediary. On July 1, 1976, Endara revoked the powers conferred on Marcos Acuña to grant them to the head of the DINA.

On that trip, he was accompanied. One of the versions collected for this investigation indicates that he traveled with Olavarría. Another, that it was with a lawyer who knew Endara well. The mystery remains.

The secret Chilean nexus of Guillermo Endara

In several interrogations, Manuel Contreras denied time and again knowing both those companies and the origin of their money. When Adolfo Bañados showed him the deeds one by one, there was a great silence.

Then his answers were heard: “Yes, the Empresa Pesquera Chile absorbed Pesquera Arauco… The government entrusted me to arrange what was necessary for me to take control… The directors were appointed by the government… On some occasions, I remember having granted money that was needed for intelligence operations in Argentina… Some -like Servicios Electrónicos– could have served to develop an electronic warfare project… Edice Investment Inc Corporation is a company that was formed in Panama by order of the government in order to use it abroad…”

What was never known, neither at that time nor later, is who had made the complicit and trusted nexus between Guillermo Endara and Humberto Olavarría and Manuel Contreras. Much was said about the CIA, but in the end, silence prevailed.

It was Guillermo Endara himself who gave a clue almost 20 years ago. In an interview he granted to the newspaper La Tercera on January 30, 1990, he said that “during post-graduate studies in New York in the 60s, he explained the Panamanian corporation system to a group of three Chilean lawyers (whom he did not identify due to professional secrecy), who used this means to take capital out of Chile during the Allende government and also in the military regime.”

One of those Chilean lawyers was Alfredo Ovalle, who took specialization courses in comparative law in the United States in the early 60s, where he coincided with Guillermo Endara. Subsequently, both would strengthen the relationship until they became partners.

It was the mining businessman who made the nexus between Endara and Humberto Olavarría for the purposes that the former president of Panama himself explained to La Tercera.

Endara's services would not only serve to hide DINA funds. They would also use them for other purposes of Manuel Contreras, Humberto Olavarría, and Ovalle himself and his partners.

Under the Endara umbrella and model, the DINA under the leadership of Olavarría would form new companies in 1976, the year of greatest international terrorist and also financial activity. And of much disorder.

Inversiones Navarino would have three different versions; in one of them, all the partners, except Fuchs and Salvador Lisboa, sign with false identities (Rolando Gálvez appears, for example, a name under which the officer Vianel Valdivieso hides).

In another, the Compañía de Inversiones Navarino Limitada y Compañía CPA, represented by Hubert Fuchs, buys all the rights of José Germain Jara in Germain y Lisboa Limitada. To these are added Comercial Caronte, Complejo Terranova, Dynamic Tour… Of all of them, the author of this report obtained copies of their duly legalized deeds.

Alfredo Ovalle also formed Panamanian companies, and several of them, which he has kept in the same reserve as his relationship with Endara, the lawyer who, upon assuming the presidency of Panama, declared a personal fortune of 17 million dollars.

It is not strange then that in June 1991, the powerful American columnist Jack Anderson decided to dig into Endara's covert activities. And he recalled that in April 1991, the Panamanian press obtained a copy of a 1990 report from the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA, the U.S. agency that directs the fight against drug trafficking) that associated several businesses created by Endara with a drug smuggling operation in southern Florida.

Endara denied any knowledge of the “extracurricular activities” of those companies, noting that he had resigned from them in 1987 “on the advice of a friend.”

It would not be the first time his name would appear in a DEA dossier. Another similar one carried out after the U.S. invasion of Panama in 1989 was made public in 1990, involving the Interbanco de Panamá, of which Endara was one of the owners and vice president, in the laundering of money from a Colombian cartel.

A deposit of US$12 million from a former head of the Medellín Cartel and another of US$6.2 million in loans to a Spaniard related to two cartel leaders were the evidence exhibited. The bank had to close its doors. Endara continued his path.

Ovalle knew the Interbanco de Panamá well. On January 3, 1979, the company Inversiones y Comercial Arauca Limitada was constituted. The partners: Humberto Olavarría and Raimundo Langlois, both representing Inversiones y Comercial Sur Limitada (Incosur) with 50% of the capital; and Máximo Montero Labbé, for Interoceanic Investment Corporation, a Panamanian company, domiciled at Ricardo Arias No. 9, Panama, with the other 50%.

Purpose: all kinds of investments in real estate, furniture, securities, and other companies. In its board of directors, Interoceanic Investment Corp. designated Guillermo Ronderos, president of the Interbanco de Panamá, of which Endara was vice president, a management for which he was accused by the DEA of money laundering. Inversiones y Comercial Sur Limitada appointed Langlois and Olavarría.

By then, Ovalle –who was simultaneously vice president of the Chilean Chamber of Construction (1976-1979)– had accumulated a long history of companies in Chile and abroad with Humberto Olavarría. In parallel to the increase in DINA companies, in December 1976, the capital of Inversiones y Comercial Fontanebleau Limitada, created that same year and whose partners were Ovalle, Gustavo Valenzuela Carey, and Raimundo Langlois, was increased.

Fontanebleau would be one of the companies from which Ovalle and his partners would multiply their businesses with Humberto Olavarría and his friends in the following years. This happened on January 28, 1977, when both groups associated through Fontanebleau and Inversiones y Comercial Sur Limitada (represented by Olavarría and Patricio Ruiz Tirado) to buy Perelló Hermanos y Compañía Limitada de Los Ángeles, for $1,700,000.00.

The company would be renamed Conservera Osiris.

Those that also multiplied were the Panamanian companies. On August 22, 1978, before the same notary Morgan, Langlois and Montero Labbé, representing Prime Investments Conglomerate Inc. and Mining Ventures Inc., both Panamanian investment companies; and Alfredo Ovalle, for Constructora Foram y cía.

Ltda., modified and increased the capital of the company Inversiones Mineras Foram Limitada, created on April 12 of that same year. Its administrators: Ovalle and Langlois.

But Olavarría was not left out of the business. One of his companies, the Sociedad Inmobiliaria Regional Limitada, continued in the network multiplying investments with Ovalle and Langlois in Inmobiliaria LVM Limitada and also in Inmobiliaria Shopping Center Limitada, to build on a social property on Calle Rengo corner of Freire in Concepción a building accepted under the Floor Law, destined for a category shopping center; exploitation and commercialization of the building, sale by floors or lots, and all operations and businesses related to the construction, reception, enabling, and operation of the property and the businesses installed in it (October 1978).

In said company, the Concepción lawyer and former partner of Olavarría, Aníbal Bórquez Pincheira, would also participate when it was transformed into Constructora e Inmobiliaria Shopping Center Limitada.

After that would come Comercial Foram Limitada (1979), a company of Ovalle and Olavarría, in which Langlois acted as administrator; the Constructora de Viviendas Económicas Reloncaví Limitada, in which a new Panamanian company of Olavarría appears, Inversiones y Comercial Transegeo; Inmobiliaria y Constructora de Viviendas Económicas Río Baker Limitada and new cross-investments through Inversiones Arauca Panamá S.A. and Inversiones y Comercial Arauca Limitada (October 20, 1979).

In said operations, Máximo Montero Labbé associated, for the Panamanian company Interoceanic Investment Corporation; Humberto Olavarría and Raimundo Langlois representing Inversiones Arauca Panamá; and Olavarría himself together with Ovalle signing for Inversiones y Comercial Sur Limitada. The only thing that remains is the trio of administrators: Olavarría, Ovalle, and Langlois.

In 1980, Ovalle, Langlois, and Olavarría decided to invest in the fishing sector. One that the DINA's finance chief knew well. By then, EPECH was in liquidation, just like the DINA, but its assets were exploited until the last minute by Olavarría and his partners.

In 1981, Langlois and Olavarría signed representing Inversiones y Comercial Sur Limitada together with the Spanish businessman Julio Rasilla Buhigas, representative in Chile of S A Pesquera Industrial Gallega S.A.P.I.G., the constitution of the new company Pesquera AROSA Ltda., with address in Punta Arenas.

Even one of the EPECH headquarters in Santiago –Moneda 856– was used by the new company thanks to Olavarría.

Months later, the trio would form a new company in the sector: Pesquera Chonos, to which two new ones would soon be added: Sociedad Pesquera Tagle y Stranger Limitada (TAGLEX) and Pesquera del Pacífico Limitada.

AROSA was already known to Olavarría for the businesses he did with EPECH in the Contreras era and especially for his role as interventor and liquidator with full powers of the company, for which he was designated by Contreras himself, when he was still its president, on the board of directors of July 15, 1977.

Ovalle also knew the Spanish fishing company. Among his partners, he had René Muñoz Valenzuela, the accountant of the DINA and of Pesquera Chile. Because both AROSA and Chonos took advantage of assets and even ships mortgaged after the liquidation of the Empresa Pesquera Chile, which left millions in losses for the State.

But in 1981 none of that mattered. The DINA had been replaced by the CNI, but everything remained the same. The businesses between Olavarría and Ovalle and their partners multiplied and so did the Panamanian companies, with Compañía de Inversiones Golfo Pérsico S.A., Comercial Fe Limitada, Inversiones Reina Victoria S.A., Trans Egeo S.A., Casinos Internacionales, a hotel network in Colombia, and many more.

Olavarría also explored other businesses: in the communications sector (a radio in Puerto Montt and another in Valparaíso), he had the concession of the Puerto Varas Casino (until the 90s) and also investments in hotels and others, developed hand in hand with Endara in Guatemala and also in Panama.

Endara had been of great help. On September 28, the man who will be remembered for assuming the presidency of Panama after the U.S. invasion of December 20, 1989, passed away from a heart attack at age 73.

In Chile, he also left traces, and very powerful ones, but they are not talked about. Because although the intervention of the Banco de Fomento del Bio Bío in 1982 caused a shake-up in the finances of this group, everyone recovered very soon.

The mining business of Ovalle and Langlois that started with an insignificant investment (Minera Las Cenizas Uno de Cabildo), by 2006 produced 20 thousand tons of fine copper per year. They are also owners of other mines, among them, the Compañía Minera Minas Carrizal Alto.

And until that same year 2006, they were owners of Minera Florida, a gold mine that in 2005 invoiced US$ 43 million. Its sale to the Canadian mining company Meridian Gold brought them US$ 100 million.

“Even if it is false modesty, my business is very solid, we are making quite substantial investments for our level of medium-sized company,” said Ovalle this Friday the 20th in the evening newspaper La Segunda.

During the interview, he was asked for the reasons for his surprise resignation from Sonami and he again invoked family reasons. He had to rule out that he had cancer, deny that there were money problems in the trade association, and even that there was a break with his partner Raimundo Langlois. “On the contrary, we are almost brothers,” stated Alfredo Ovalle, faced with the journalist's insistence on ruling out reasons for his strange departure from Sonami.

*Journalists Sebastián Minay and Juan Pablo Figueroa collaborated in this investigation.

Note 1 The deeds and the first part of the story about the secret financing of the DINA were published in a series in the newspaper La Nación in November 1992.

Note 2 Lautaro Villar Requena, while an Army captain, was a student at the School of the Americas in 1963, which he attended for a second time in 1969 as a major. He belonged to the DINA and committed suicide in April 1990, at age 59, when he was a retired colonel.

Note 3 Leonardo Reyes Herrera, of “Villar y Reyes”, group commander and head of the Manquehue Base of the FACH, was sentenced on June 10, 2008, to 8 years in prison together with squadron commander Fernando Carreño Ortega and 5 other officers and non-commissioned officers of the same institution as co-authors of two qualified kidnappings: Jorge Aillon Lara (33 years old), father of three children, employee of the Agricultural Trade Company and PC militant, who after being detained by FACH personnel disappeared without a trace, and the teacher María Arriagada Jerez (40 years old), three children, teachers' union leader, who was seen for the last time at the Manquehue Air Base. The first-instance sentence, issued by judge Fernando Carreño, ordered the immediate arrest of the accused, who at the time were fulfilling functions at the Manquehue Air Base, of the FACH, in the city of Temuco. He also sentenced officer Heriberto Pereira Rojas and non-commissioned officers Jorge Soto Herrera, Luis Yáñez Silva, Jorge Valdebenito Isler, and Enrique Rebolledo Sotelo.

Note 4 The head of the DINA's Foreign Department was the then-colonel Raúl Iturriaga, who in these days should be sentenced by the Supreme Court for his participation in the crime of General Carlos Prats and his wife (Buenos Aires, September 1974) and already prosecuted for the attack against Bernardo Leighton and his wife, in Rome, in 1975.

Note 5 Even in one of the letters that the former DINA agent Michael Townley sends to his friend and also DINA agent Gustavo Etchepare, he tells him: “the Sarin project (Andrea) gave optimal results during Holy Week of 1976.”

Source: ciper.cl, November 20, 2009