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Chilean anti-abortion group in legal fight to keep donors secret [1]
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Date: 2023-09
A wealthy and well-connected anti-abortion group has gone to court to block the disclosure of its private donors following an investigation by openDemocracy and La Pública.
It comes after a year-long effort by the two news organisations that reveals how three powerful anti-rights nonprofits in Chile are using legal loopholes to protect the identity of funders while influencing politicians to limit reproductive and equal rights for women and LGBTIQ communities.
Two of the groups – Cuide Chile and the Organization for Research, Training and Women’s Studies (ISFEM) – have not declared any private donations at all in their tax returns. The other group – Chile Unido (United Chile) – has declared private donations, but not the source of them. So, earlier this year openDemocracy and La Pública asked Chile’s independent Transparency Council for Chile Unido’s donor information to be made public. The request was granted, but the country’s tax laws allow nonprofits and private foundations to keep donors’ names secret and Chile Unido is appealing the Transparency Council’s decision on those grounds.
The case could set a legal precedent on the robustness of privacy and financial disclosure shields for Chilean nonprofits and foundations. The Transparency Council ruling, which granted disclosure, cited a legitimate “public interest” in the donors because they receive tax breaks. It said that tax breaks are “a benefit” granted by the state and paid by society as a whole.
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openDemocracy and La Pública, a Chilean news outlet that specialises in data-driven investigations on transparency, have worked around Chile’s donor privacy laws. We scoured the legislative calendar going back 15 years, as well as a database of 45 civil society organisations, in order to shine a light on Chile Unido, Cuide Chile and ISFEM’s work to shape constitutional and civil rights in the country.
Our findings show the connections their leaders have in the world of politics, business and public policy – and the scale of their wealth. Cuide Chile founder María Pía Adriasola is a lawyer who is the wife of former far-right presidential candidate José Antonio Kast, ISFEM founder Ismini Anastassiou Mustakis is a Chilean metals magnate, and Chile Unido’s president Heriberto Urzúa Sánchez is the director of an international chain of retail shops and a board member of more than a dozen companies spanning agricultural export and real estate.
Economist Eduardo Engel, who chaired a 2015 advisory body appointed by former president Michelle Bachelet to fight corruption, says the lack of transparency is troubling. “Chile’s legislation doesn’t even guarantee to know who are the main funders of foundations that frequently have an impact on the public agenda,” he told us.
The investigation also found a curious loophole in Chilean law. Although foundations are legally required to submit annual reports listing their activities and balance sheets to the Ministry of Justice, as well as tax returns to the tax authority, there is no penalty if they don’t.
Cuide Chile and ISFEM have failed to file annual reports, the justice ministry confirmed to us in 2022. Chile Unido has filed them for each year from 2016 to 2021.
Chilean tax authorities do have a publicly available list of annual philanthropic donations. Updated to 2022, it is based on the sums declared in tax returns. But, as well as being incomplete, the list does not match the funding source to the recipients.
As such, through Chile Unido’s own publicly filed documents we found amounts received as grants, but not the identity of the donor. We made multiple public information requests to the tax authority and the justice ministry regarding Chile Unido and the other two organisations. But the answers we received from the justice ministry fell short and our requests to the tax authority were denied under Chilean donor privacy laws.
When we appealed the decision and won, Chile Unido and the tax authority pushed back and launched their own appeals to uphold the right to donor secrecy. The first hearing in the case is yet to be scheduled. Our repeated interview requests to Chile Unido’s president Heriberto Urzúa Sánchez and Verónica Hoffmann, the group’s executive director, remain unanswered.
Far-right lobbying arm
Cuide Chile’s political connections to the far-right are clear, but its funding sources are not.
Some of the organisation’s members belong to former presidential candidate Kast’s Republican party. Kast, who suffered a resounding defeat in the December 2021 run-off vote at the hands of former left-wing student leader Gabriel Boric, now chairs the Political Network for Values. It is an ultra conservative transatlantic platform of politicians and anti-abortion, anti-LGBTIQ activists. Adriasola, his wife, is the public face of Cuide Chile. According to its August 2018 registration documents, Cuide Chile started with two million Chilean pesos ($2,000). Its current financial balance is unknown.
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[1] Url:
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/5050/chile-anti-abortion-donor-secrecy-legal-fight-investigation/
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