The International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) has just ruled in favor of the Chilean State, denying compensation to Spanish-Chilean citizen Víctor Pey for the usurpation of his assets during the dictatorship, among them the legendary newspaper Clarín.

This is a story in which a popular newspaper, a former president, a press myth, agents of the military dictatorship's repression, and the solemn Central Bank of Chile are intertwined in a novelistic fashion.

Payday. In an office on Calle Nueva York in the heart of Santiago, as every month, the line of DINA agents, mostly civilians, waits for the envelopes containing their salaries. The payment is secure. The times they are living in are, too.

For them. The employer’s iron fist protects them from harm. Among those who attend is the beautiful nurse Carlota Bolumburu Taboada, "The Pentothal Lady," known as such for the overdoses she injected into prisoners at the Santa Lucía and London clinics.

Alejandra Damiani Serrano also waits for payment. She was the right hand of the "gringo" Michael Townley, the "engineer" of the DINA. He was the assembler of the bomb that killed General Carlos Prats and his wife Sofía Cuthbert in 1974 in Buenos Aires.

The boss's mistress also receives her remuneration. Nélida Gutiérrez Rivera, secretary to Manuel Contreras. In the end, Nélida stayed by his side until today, in these times of suffering.

Elissalde & Poblete y Cía. Limitada is the paying company. Its corporate name is elegant and unmistakable: "DINA Service." On November 24, 1974, "DINA Service" changed "owners" and went from "Servicios Industriales Villar y Reyes Ltda." to Elissalde & Poblete, who acquired all rights and remained as the sole partners.

They are the retired Army Colonel Alberto Elissalde Müller and the lawyer Miguel Ángel Armando Poblete Rodríguez. The other two were Lautaro Villar Requena and Leonardo Reyes Herrera.

These were times when DINA lawyers had plenty to do. Among other issues, they had to cover the usurped movable and immovable property with a legal mantle. They belonged to those who were now prisoners, exiled, or already murdered.

It costs little to legalize the "war trophies" of the victors. It is enough for them to slip into a pocket during a raid, or to draft a simple decree when it comes to properties.

This is the fate of the "Casa de Piedra" in the Cajón del Maipo. Its owner is nicknamed Volpone, like the theatrical comedy by Ben Jonson. Since before the 1973 military coup, Darío Saint-Marie Soruco, Volpone, was a good friend of Salvador Allende.

Saint-Marie was the owner of Consorcio Publicitario y Periodístico S.A. and the Empresa Periodística El Clarín. Clarín was the newspaper that sold the most copies per day in the history of Chilean journalism.

Over 300,000. Acidic. Sharp. Irreverent. Snake-tongued. Inclined toward crime, police stories, scandalous romances; it was popular in style. With Allende's triumph in 1970, it turned into a political newspaper that supported the Unidad Popular government.

After the military uprising of September 11, 1973, both the consortium and the Clarín newspaper were dissolved, and all of Saint-Marie's assets were confiscated and passed into the hands of the State. Among them, the Casa de Piedra.

Decree 165 of the Ministry of the Interior, signed by generals Augusto Pinochet in his capacity as "President of the Republic" and César Benavides as minister of that portfolio, whitewashed the seizure. Allende is dead and Volpone is in Spain. Of the glory days of Clarín, only the memory remains.

THE "DELIVERY ACT"

The Casa de Piedra was occupied by the DINA a few weeks after the coup. But the "official" transfer from the Army to the organization did not arrive until 1977, a few months before it was dissolved and replaced by the Central Nacional de Informaciones (CNI).

Decree 56 of the Ministry of Lands and Colonization of February 3, 1977, signed by Pinochet and the minister of that portfolio, Luis Beytía, allocated the large property nestled in the beautiful landscapes of the Andean foothills to the DINA "for its own purposes."

The person who received the mansion as "Head of Infrastructure" of the repressive organ is the same lawyer from Elissalde & Poblete y Cía. Ltda., Miguel Ángel Armando Poblete Rodríguez, RUT 3.688.003-1, born on May 23, 1948.

The "Delivery Act" has no date. Curiously, Poblete appears in the receipt act as "Head of Infrastructure of the CNI," when the mansion was transferred to the DINA. Poblete Rodríguez's signature is adorned with a CNI stamp.

Since September 11, 2000, and until today, this lawyer has been part of the Central Bank's Legal Department team, with an indefinite contract. His date of entry into the issuing institution is paradoxically coincident with the beginning of his history, 37 years earlier.

The person who received the mansion as "Head of Infrastructure" of the repressive organ is the same lawyer from Elissalde & Poblete y Cía. Ltda., Miguel Ángel Armando Poblete Rodríguez, RUT 3.688.003-1, born on May 23, 1948.

The "Delivery Act" has no date. In it, Eduvigis Gajardo Pinilla, head of the National Assets Department of the Ministry of Lands and Colonization, hands over the property to the lawyer Poblete Rodríguez, who signs as "Head of Infrastructure." Curiously, Poblete appears in the receipt act as "Head of Infrastructure of the CNI," when the mansion was transferred to the DINA.

Poblete Rodríguez's signature is adorned with a CNI stamp.

Since September 11, 2000, and until today, this lawyer has been part of the Central Bank's Legal Department team, with an indefinite contract. His date of entry into the issuing institution is paradoxically coincident with the beginning of his history, 37 years earlier.

ALLENDE AND CLARÍN

The history of the Casa de Piedra is intertwined between good times and storms. Between friendship, family life, suffering, and crime. A report by the Asset Laundering Investigation Brigade (Brilac), by Inspector Carlos Quijada Fuentes, investigated in 2007 for Judge Alejandro Madrid the different times of the mansion and other assets that belonged to Volpone.

The investigation concluded that in 1972, during the height of the socialist government, President Salvador Allende bought the Consorcio Publicitario y Periodístico and the Empresa Periodística El Clarín from Darío Saint-Marie.

According to the information gathered by this report, Allende allegedly made the acquisitions through his personal friend Víctor Pey Casado, to make them available to the political process that his government was developing.

The money for the purchase, the police report maintains, had its origin "among others, in the transfer of US$ 780,000 on September 26, 1972, from the National Bank of Cuba to the Bank für Handel und Effekten in Zürich, to account 11.235 of Víctor Pey Casado, an intimate friend of Allende."

According to the Brilac document, the information about this acquisition has its origin in a report that the president of the State Defense Council, Lorenzo de la Maza Rivadeneira, made on October 3, 1974, for the Justice Advisor of the Ministry of the Interior, Lieutenant Colonel Eduardo Avello Concha.

However, Víctor Pey, who has now lost the litigation against the Chilean State for the ownership of the newspaper El Clarín, told El Mostrador that "that is an absolutely false assertion; Allende never asked me to buy the newspaper for him, even though I had a close relationship with him." What Pey does acknowledge is that he bought the newspaper from Saint-Marie and admits that the transaction with Volpone—who had already settled in Madrid in 1972—"was done through banks that would give us more security that there would be no infiltration by the CIA.

Indeed, that account in Zürich was mine." Pey maintains that "surely Mr. De la Maza's report, on which the police document you speak to me about was based, wanted to tarnish the name of Allende, which was what interested them most."

Another person who denies that alleged covert operation by Allende is the journalist Alberto Gamboa, who was the director of Clarín during the Unidad Popular government. "I am absolutely unaware of that; I never knew of anything like that," he stated.

After the military coup, the dictatorship decreed on February 10, 1975, the dissolution of CPP.SA and the Empresa Periodística El Clarín. Furthermore, it resolved that both the assets of Saint-Marie and Pey Casado should pass into the domain of the State, as they were in the situation of Decree 77 of December 13, 1973.

This decree declared political parties illegal, confiscating all their assets, including the societies or companies that "directly or through third parties, belong to or are directed by them."

IN THE FAMILY

The steps of the current lawyer for the Central Bank's Legal Department, Miguel Ángel Poblete Rodríguez, in the financing of the dictatorship's repressive services come and go. From paying the salaries of the DINA's civilian agents and signing the receipt of Volpone's Casa de Piedra, his tracks advance toward the 1980s.

On October 8, 1984, according to a public deed, Poblete registered in the Santiago Commercial Registry the "Sociedad Administradora de Servicios de Personal Limitada," with the fantasy name "Asper Ltda." His partners?

Germán Alfredo Esquivel Caballero and Mario Zamorano Monreal. Esquivel Caballero was an agent of the Comando Conjunto, a Lieutenant Colonel (R) of the Carabineros, and prosecuted for crimes against humanity.

Asper Limitada, formerly called Boxer & Asper, continued to pay the salaries of the CNI civilians. As the deed was modified, the CNI agent Ernesto Darío Zamorano Barrueto, who joined in October 1985, also acted as a partner of Asper.

Another CNI agent, a currently retired Army Colonel, César Atilio Risi Vignolo, was a partner starting in December 1987. In June 1989, reinforcements arrived in the form of Major Luis Isaac Contreras Prieto.

This man was one of the pilots of the Puma helicopters of the Army Aviation Command, used to throw the bodies of prisoners into the sea. No stranger. Everything stayed in the "family" of the lawyer Poblete.

The modifications to the parent deed were made with another "man of the house." The DINA notary Hernán Blanche Sepúlveda, who still practices as a notary in Santiago today.

After the dictatorship was defeated in the 1988 plebiscite, Asper was dissolved on March 8, 1990.

"I was never a DINA agent," lawyer Poblete told El Mostrador, but he admitted that he is indeed the Poblete of "Elissalde & Poblete." However, he explained that "I did not know that those salaries that were being paid were for DINA or CNI agents; I found that out much later." He maintained that "indeed I did freelance work for the CNI" and assured that "the receipt act for that house," referring to Volpone's Casa de Piedra, "I signed it only out of a rush," implying that things were done "disorderly."

A CLEAR "PATRON"

The military agents were paid their salaries by their respective institutions. There was a budget for that. But the civilians, who paid them? Neither Villar, nor Reyes, nor Elissalde, nor Poblete—the shell companies—were millionaire patrons.

Some businessmen who were friends and beneficiaries of the regime did it. Until now, only the name of Ricardo Claro Valdés has been established, who did have a lot of money. There are no signed documents.

But his participation in the financing of organized crime is supported by different voices that indicate it. The former agent Eduardo Cabezas Mardones, who was part of the unknown DINA Economic Brigade in late 1976, as he recounts in a judicial statement.

The former agent Arturo Ramírez Labeé, head of that brigade. And the former agent Jorgelino Vergara Bravo, better known as El Mocito, as he told it for the book La Danza de los Cuervos by journalist Javier Rebolledo.

DECEPTION OF THE RETTIG COMMISSION

The Casa de Piedra was a prized booty for the military. It was a temporary DINA detention and torture barracks. An Intelligence School for the training of agents. A vacation center for its officers and their families.

A place for parties and celebrations. And a place for receiving important friends like Ricardo Claro. The historic meeting between Augusto Pinochet and the clandestine secretary-general of the Communist Party, Víctor Díaz López, took place there after he was arrested.

According to a judicial statement by the second-in-command of the Grupo Delfín that operated in the Simón Bolívar barracks, Ricardo Lawrence Mires, at that meeting Díaz told Pinochet that "trying to exterminate the Communist Party is like emptying the water from the sea with a bucket."

It was in that mansion that the episode of the false DINA martyr was concocted, with which the Army deceived the Rettig Commission in 1990. On the morning of September 20, 1974, the agent, non-commissioned officer, and specialized commando Carlos Labarca Sanhueza shattered the head of his comrade of equal rank and training, José González Ulloa, with bullets.

Both were instructors of agents at the National Intelligence School that the DINA temporarily installed in the mansion. Both were also members of Pinochet's Security Advance Guard since November 1973. Two elite men who even instructed officers.

It was never known why Labarca killed González. The second-in-command of the DINA, Pedro Espinoza Bravo, did not tell Judge Alejandro Solís, to whom he recounted this crime judicially at the beginning of 2004, within the framework of the investigation into the assassination of General Carlos Prats and his wife in Buenos Aires.

The Army presented González's case to the Rettig Commission as a "victim of extremism." The Commission believed it without investigating. In its report on González Ulloa, the Commission established: "He died on September 20, 1974, in a confrontation with unknown armed groups inside the Cajón del Maipo" that "presumably acted for political motives." It added that the Commission "formed the conviction that the death of the victim was a violation of human rights."

These are shreds of a history that today is part of the collective memory of a large part of Chilean society. And Clarín became an unforgettable myth, amidst the bullets and the blood that flowed in torrents through the streets of Chile starting from the military uprising of 1973.

Source: El Mostrador, January 3, 2013