Powerful Chilean lawyer detained over alleged money laundering and tax fraud
ONE of Chile’s most powerful lawyers was ordered to be detained on Tuesday pending trial on money laundering and tax fraud charges in a case that has rocked the country’s corporate and political elite.
After five days of hearings, a court in the capital accepted the prosecution’s request to transfer criminal lawyer Luis Hermosilla to state custody.
It was the latest development in a high-profile corruption scandal that blew up last November when leaked audio recordings appeared to show Mr Hermosilla telling a former client about bribes he planned to pay officials at Chile’s two main market regulators.
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Kate Clark remembers a lawyer, exiled after the military overthrow of left-wing president Allende, who later helped to prosecute scores of the military coup-plotters and was instrumental in forming a new generation of human rights lawyers in the country in the ’90s