Weekly Report - 30 April 2009 (WR-09-17)

CHILE | Piñera unburdens himself. The likely presidential candidate for the right-wing Alianza por Chile coalition, Sebastián Piñera, has signed a voluntary blind trust contract placing US$400m of investment in public limited companies in third party hands. Piñera said the move showed his determination to avoid any conflict of interests should he win December's elections. He made it just as the government sent a bill to congress requiring those seeking public office to place business interests in a blind trust, making sales of shares in certain companies mandatory. He said he would only remain director of Chile's most popular football team, Colo Colo, while resigning as a director on other company boards.
Piñera keeps hold of Lan Chile and Chilevisión. He said he had signed a contract guaranteeing the sale of his 26.3% stake in Lan Chile in 2010 if he is elected president, and had called on a firm of lawyers to produce a statute guaranteeing the independent editorial line and programming of Chilevisión. The presidential spokeswoman, Carolina Tohá, said that it beggared belief that a presidential aspirant could consider the ownership of a major media outlet to be “irrelevant".