The Valparaíso Prosecutor’s Office is investigating contracts between the National Petroleum Company (ENAP) and the law firm Albagli Zaliasnik. Gabriel Zaliasnik, a partner at the firm, is currently Chile’s ambassador to Israel. According to the news outlet Reportea, the state-owned company reportedly paid more than US$1 million to the firm between 2019 and 2025.
BioBioChile reported this, explaining that prosecutors are seeking to establish whether those payments are linked to efforts to finance the defense of former Carabineros Director General Mario Rozas. Rozas is under investigation for his alleged command responsibility for human rights violations during the social unrest.
Radio Universidad de Chile reported that ENAP acknowledged seven contracts with the firm. The Prosecutor’s Office requested that information from the company through an official letter, a formal written request.
According to Reportea, the most significant contract dates from June 2020. That date coincides with chats between Zaliasnik and lawyer Luis Hermosilla in which, according to the report, both pressured ENAP’s then-chair, Loreto Silva, to help finance Rozas’s defense. The ambassador’s defense team denies that account.
Zaliasnik is listed as a suspect in one branch of the Hermosilla case, according to Radio Universidad de Chile. Being a suspect means that prosecutors are investigating him, without any charges having been filed or a conviction handed down. The investigations focus on two offenses: influence peddling and embezzlement of public funds, meaning the misuse of state resources.
The influence-peddling investigation is based on chats that allegedly show Zaliasnik’s influence over at least ten appointments of judges to the Supreme Court and various appeals courts. The embezzlement investigation rests on conversations about obtaining funds for Rozas’s defense and requests for access to confidential expenditure funds.
Zaliasnik’s lawyer, Jorge Gálvez, defended the legality of the contracts. "This is a perfectly reasonable, well-reasoned and fully documented engagement for professional services," he said. He added that his client has not been summoned to testify and is available to cooperate with the Public Prosecutor’s Office.
Hermosilla, for his part, said he had been unaware of the contracts. "I only learned of the existence of these matters now, along with the rest of Chile," he stated, and said he did not know anyone at ENAP.
Socialist Deputy Daniel Manouchehri, a complainant in the Hermosilla case, called on President José Antonio Kast to request the ambassador’s resignation. "We demand his departure," he declared. The sources do not report a response from the government.
Manouchehri announced that he will send an official request to ENAP for complete copies of the contracts, a breakdown of payments and the supporting records that justified the contracts. The sources do not specify a date for further investigative steps by prosecutors.
