President Piñera presents anti-abuse agenda for dignified and fair treatment: The agenda includes actual prison time for collusion involving basic consumer goods such as food and medicine
This Monday President Sebastián Piñera presented an anti-abuse agenda for dignified and fair treatment, which combats collusion and market abuse with greater severity and improves consumer and employee protection.
The President explained in detail that the agenda will increase penalties with actual prison time when the goods involved are basic consumer goods such as medicine or food, among others.
In addition, it will also increase criminal penalties and fines for tax crimes, using insider information and disclosing false information, in order to prevent abuse and ensure equal opportunity and information in financial markets.
The agenda also requires companies that sell products to the State to identify their individual owners in order to provide greater transparency, detect and combat abuse, conflicts of interest and excessive concentration in the provision of goods and services to the State.
“Therefore, as with violent crimes, we are increasing penalties for so-called ‘white-collar crimes,’” the President said on a national radio and television network.
The agenda also enhances protection of consumer rights: it will do away with small print in contracts of adhesion using a SERNAC Digital Platform that will allow consumers to terminate contracts they do not wish to maintain as easily as they originally signed.
In addition, it will make school textbook sales more transparent, requiring educational establishments to provide parents and guardians with all the options and information they need to buy the least expensive textbooks their children need.
The President stressed the importance of promoting “a culture of respect towards the human rights of all people at all times, in all places and circumstances,” by strengthening institutions such as the Undersecretary of Human Rights, the National Human Rights Institute, the Service for the Protection of Children, and the Public Defender's Office. This includes improving victim support and assistance, guaranteeing access to truth and justice, and preventing impunity.
President Piñera highlighted that “rules governing the use of force by our Order and Security Forces and the way public order and peaceful citizen protests are safeguarded must also be reviewed.”
The President emphasized that his administration will move forward towards a New Pension System and a Health Reform, creating a New Universal Health Plan guaranteed for all Chileans with a funding mechanism that families can afford that includes Catastrophic Health Insurance. It will also promote legislation to help debtors who have defaulted on government-backed loans (créditos aval del estado or CAE in Spanish) to regularize their situation by forgiving fines and penalty interest so they can access the benefits of the new loan system.
“I am fully convinced and have faith that with unity, dialogue, consensus and good will, we will overcome these difficult times and recover the path towards a Chile with greater freedom, justice, progress and peace,” he concluded.