President Gabriel Boric himself took it upon himself to inform his country of the agreement reached between Codelco, Chile’s most important state mining company, and Soquimich (SQM), the private company that has been operating in the rich Atacama salt flats for some years. The two entities have agreed to jointly exploit the huge lithium reserves in the northern desert.
In this new partnership, the two entities would each own 50 percent until 2060, with the state-owned mining company managing the company in its first period until 2030, after which SQM would take over management.
This is the most significant agreement in Chilean business history, which, if the projections are achieved and the good relationship between the two partners prospers, would provide the national treasury with enormous resources for the development of the national economy.
No one doubts the benefits this agreement could bring to the country, nor the fact that the new company would practically lead the world in this activity. It would ensure Chile greater confidence among potential private and foreign investors seeking fertile ground for their businesses.
Boric has been praised for his pragmatism in consolidating this agreement. This is because nobody would have imagined that the questioned company of Julio Ponce Lerou, the Dictator’s son-in-law, would end up partnering with the State after decades of politics and, in particular, from the centre-left, what was favoured was the recovery of a company that was ill-gotten during the Dictatorship, like many other fiscal productive fountains that Pinochet sold at a vile price to his friends and relatives.
During the governments of the Concertación and the New Majority, the truth is that nothing was done to recover the plundered companies. Patricio Aylwin promised “justice as far as possible”, so that everything remained as the dictatorship had left it in business matters.
To add to the embarrassment that this news causes many, until a few years ago Soquimich was one of the business entities that collaborated in the illegal financing of politics, providing large amounts of funds to favour candidates and legislators in office. This resulted in severe and documented journalistic denunciations and judicial investigations that culminated in the conviction of the offenders with very discreet and scandalous sentences, as well as complete impunity for Ponce Lerou and other businessmen who exercised millionaire bribery. A “collar and tie” crime, as it was called.
It is perfectly possible to suspect, then, that these resources destined to corrupt politicians and judges are today collecting a dividend as succulent as the one that will allow Soquimich to become the main partner of the Chilean state and with it the possibility that the Treasury could one day recover what was illicitly granted to the so-called private initiative.
So gigantic are the resources of this company that its bribes may also have favoured the Codelco executives who are so enthusiastic about this deal. As well as the media and journalists who are celebrating the news announced by the head of state himself. Something unusual if one remembers what Boric declared in the past against Ponce Lerou, as well as the position taken by the left-wing groups before coming to government.
The truth is that all this has meant an icy bath of realism on the part of questioned Chilean politics. We could say that not even the right or the business world could have imagined such audacity. This confirms, once again, that it is left-wing governments that often comply with the most heartfelt ideas of the right, such as this business agreement, and the recent fact that the most important detractors of the 1980 Constitution have promoted and won a vote to give continuity to Pinochet’s Fundamental Charter.
Surely to alleviate their bad conscience and show some modesty, the negotiators of this great business agreement have agreed that the majority owner of Soquimich, Julio Ponce Lerou, or any of his relatives “up to the second degree of consanguinity”, should abstain from participating in the boards of the new mining entity. A cynical obligation that would be imposed until 2030.
This is how an experienced leftist senator, recently deceased, dared to declare that the socialist government of Ricardo Lagos had been the best right-wing administration of the entire post-dictatorship. Just as others could not believe that a right-wing president like Sebastián Piñera had lavished so many bonuses on the middle class and the poorest: while at the same time, he had managed to successfully tackle the Coronavirus pandemic with generous fiscal resources. “Nobody knows who he works for” is the name of this old game.
