[Economics] Family of the “King of Greenwashing” sues environmental defenders for more than $10 billion

[FNX Magokiler]

In the first monitoring report on the implementation of the Escazú Agreement in Chile, the NGO Escazú Ahora revealed that in Chile, since the treaty was signed a little over a year ago, a diagnostic survey of how many environmental defenders has not yet been carried out. in the country are currently under threat. This report also denounces that the so-called “Alert Circuit” – whose implementation was announced in April of this year by the Undersecretariat of the Environment, to provide protection to human rights defenders in environmental matters – does not exists. “Not even the technical group in charge of its design has defined a roadmap to address the creation of an initiative of such characteristics,” they point out.

While the only instrument remains immobile, cases in Chile begin to multiply and take various forms, going from anonymous threat to judicial pressure, through legal instruments. The most recent case: the one that affects ten environmental defenders, most of them elderly, who have denounced the real estate explosion that affects La Campana National Park, declared a Biosphere Reserve.

The complaints made by these residents of the Hijuelas commune against the owners of the Oasis de la Campana SpA Real Estate Agency led the Superintendence of the Environment (SMA) to open a sanctioning process against the company for evading current regulations, modifying the original project , allowing a real estate explosion of thousands of lots without having an Environmental Qualification Resolution.

 

 

For this violation, classified as very serious, the company risks a fine that exceeds $7.5 billion.

Just a few weeks after this process was opened, and in the midst of a series of protests carried out in the surrounding area and the placement of signs at the entrances to the so-called Oasis ecological subdivision, the brothers Francisco and Mauricio Moreno Sagredo, owners of the questioned company, filed civil lawsuits against the complainants for the property damage caused in the sale of the plots. The lawsuits, together, total more than $10 billion, a figure even higher than the fine the company risks.

Joaquín Salinas, coordinator of the Escazú Ahora Defenders Campaign, points out that “this is undoubtedly an act of intimidation against social leaders. In these types of situations, it is urgent that the State take protection and prevention measures. “We cannot continue violating environmental defenders.”

 

https://www.elmostrador.cl/noticias/pais/2023/11/13/familia-del-rey-del-lavado-verde-demanda-por-mas-de-10-mil-millones-a-defensores-ambientales/