The Court of Appeals of Santiago rejected this Friday the appeal for protection filed against the Public Ministry and the State Defense Councilfor reviewing information on the cell phone of attorney Luis Hermosilla, within the framework of an investigation into corruption crimes in the Audio case.
In a divided ruling, the Seventh Chamber of the appeal court established that the protection remedy is not the ideal way to control the Public Ministry’s investigation and that the affected third party must resort to the ordinary processing of criminal cases if they consider themselves affected.
Luis Hermosilla’s Chats
The rejected action was presented by lawyer Mario Vargas Cociña against the CDE and the Public Ministry, which was intended to prevent the CDE from having access to the Hermosilla chats.
The ruling, which La Radio had access to, states that “consequently, the actions of the Public Prosecutor’s Office, in that it intends to review, without a time limit, all the conversations that Mr. Hermosilla may have had, including those with Mr. Vargas Cociña, is not covered by the court order issued by the 4th Guarantee Court.”
It is also noted that “the order given by the aforementioned guarantee court is related to the crime that is being investigated by the MP –bribery– and that the transcription, which reached the enormous amount of 770,000 pages, had to be made with respect to those messages that have to do with the investigation, so that if such conversations include those of the appellant, then these should not and cannot be disclosed, unless, obviously, they are related to the fact investigated, but this court of appeal does not can direct the investigation of the prosecuting entity, which is autonomous, and it will be this institution that will take care, in its investigative work, not to reveal, either to those involved or to third parties, transcripts of exchanges of messages that have nothing to do with the many times mentioned investigation (…)”.
As concluded in the ruling, the Public Ministry “has had judicial authorization to seize Mr. Hermosilla’s phone and ’empty’ its contents and, until now, has not revealed the content of the transcripts, which total the amount of 770,000 pages (…)”.
The decision was agreed with the vote against Minister María Loreto Gutiérrez Alvear.
