The former mayor of Antofagasta, Karen Rojo (2012-2020), has scored an important judicial victory after the Antofagasta Guarantee Court on Friday accepted a request presented by her defense to credit 1,463 days to her five-year prison sentence for fraud against the treasury during her tenure as communal chief. This period, which is added to the fulfillment of the sentence, corresponds to the almost four years in which the former councilwoman remained detained in the Netherlands, a country to which she fled in 2021 after the Supreme Court confirmed the ruling that ratified the sentence against her. With this resolution, 80% of the full sentence has been deemed served, leaving 363 days (less than one year) pending to remain in prison.
The resolution has been celebrated by Fidel Castro, the former mayor’s lawyer, who has detailed the situation of his client, who is currently incarcerated in the San Joaquín Women’s Penitentiary Center in Santiago. “1,463 days are additionally credited to her, that is, until July 14 of this year, and from July 15 a different credit begins, because it is a national credit, but, in concrete terms, this implies that Ms. Karen Rojo has served 80 percent of her sentence,” Castro said in statements reported by Emol. The lawyer has also stated that once the definition of the credit to the sentence is resolved, progress will be made on the request for alternative fulfillment of the sentence, where other measures will be sought to allow her to leave prison, such as house arrest or supervised release.
The regional prosecutor of Antofagasta, Juan Castro Bekios, has specified that the credit to Rojo’s sentence is explained by the execution of law and international treaties, but has insisted that this does not imply a reduction in the sentence imposed against her. “One should not be confused: crediting is not releasing. Ms. Karen Rojo is currently in the State of Chile, serving her sentence in accordance with Chilean law, and she has a period of sentence left to serve, which she must serve in accordance with Chilean law,” he expressed.
Karen Rojo, a pharmaceutical chemist by profession, arrived in Chile on July 15 from the city of Utrecht, where she had been deprived of liberty since July 2022. Her transfer was achieved after the procedures for her extradition from the Netherlands were finalized. She arrived at Arturo Merino Benítez Airport in Santiago, escorted by two officers from the Investigative Police (PDI), members of Interpol. She was then admitted to prison as a convicted person with a firm and enforceable sentence with no available resources for its modification.
The judicial process against the former mayor originated from fraud against the treasury committed between 2015 and 2016, during her first period at the helm of the Antofagasta municipality, in northern Chile, about 1,300 kilometers from Santiago. According to the Prosecutor’s Office in the trial, Rojo hired a communications agency for political advice aimed at her 2016 re-election campaign, for an amount close to 24 million pesos (about 35,000 dollars at the time) which were financed with school subsidy funds and municipal health resources. In January 2021, she was sentenced by the Antofagasta Oral Criminal Court to five years in prison, in a resolution that was ratified by the Supreme Court on March 22, 2022, the same day the former authority took a flight to Amsterdam to seek political asylum that was never granted. She was arrested in July of the same year in the European country, where she remained for almost four years while the extradition process unfolded.
Rojo, an independent close to the right, led one of the most important cities in northern Chile for eight years. Her political career began in 2012, when she was appointed regional ministerial secretary of Health for the Antofagasta region during the first government of Sebastián Piñera (2010-2014). That same year she ran as an independent candidate for the mayoralty of the municipality, a position for which she was elected without the support of a political party. She achieved re-election in 2016, in a second term that came to an early end in July 2020 after she was suspended from office due to the judicial investigation against her. The former councilwoman was not a member of any political party and refused to participate in the primaries of Chile Vamos, the coalition made up of the traditional right-wing parties RN and UDI.