Piñeragate

The two people involved in the scandal, Sebastián Piñera (left) and Evelyn Matthei, pose for a photo in 2009.

Piñeragate, also known as Kiotazo, was a political scandal that occurred in Chile on August 23, 1992. It involved the revelation of a covertly recorded telephone conversation during a live broadcast on Megavisión, a private channel. The conversation featured Sebastián Piñera, a senator and pre-candidate for the 1993 presidential election, conspiring against his political rival, deputy Evelyn Matthei.

Piñera and Matthei were both members of the "youth patrol" of the right-wing National Renewal (RN) party and were vying to become the presidential candidate of the Union for Progress political coalition.

On the political television program A eso de..., Ricardo Claro, the businessman and president of the broadcasting channel, played the recording using a Kioto brand cassette player. In the recording, Piñera can be heard asking his friend Pedro Pablo Díaz to influence the moderators of the show in order to undermine Matthei's credibility and hinder her progress in the race.

On November 7, 1992, Matthei admitted in a press conference that she was the source of the leak. She subsequently withdrew her presidential pre-candidacy and resigned from the party several months later. As a result of the incident, National Renewal chose to go with a third candidate.

Despite the scandal, Piñera went on to become President twice, serving from 2010 to 2014 and from 2018 to 2022. Meanwhile, Matthei stayed in Congress and later became the coalition's presidential candidate in 2013. They remained on good terms with each other, and Matthei even served as minister during Piñera's first presidency.

Public revelation

The recording was revealed on the live television program A eso de... on the private channel Megavisión by Ricardo Claro, the businessman and president of the broadcasting station. Claro played the recording via a Kioto brand cassette player, which is why the episode is also known as the Kiotazo.

I have received some quite serious information that the independence of this program may be threatened. You know that I receive a lot of information, which comes in the most incredible ways, without me even asking for it. Today, after lunch, I received a man I didn't know. He told me, "You pride yourself on being very independent, but there are people at your channel who are intervening," and he handed me a recorded tape of an apparently telephonic conversation between Jorge Andrés Richards' friend, Pedro Pablo Díaz, and Senator Sebastián Piñera. On that tape, the voice that appears to be Sebastián Piñera's tells Pedro Pablo Díaz, "You have to talk to Jorge Andrés Richards so that Evelyn Matthei is treated in a certain way, asked about divorce, what her position is on divorce, put her in evidence that she changes her opinion just like her father." Pedro Pablo Díaz, who is a Coca-Cola executive that I know, replies, "Look, I'll talk to the 'pelao' (Jorge Andrés Richards)." I brought the recording here. I apologize to the audience because the recording is not the best. This device is very bad, but also because there are a series of words that are not salon-appropriate. Nonetheless, I think it's interesting to know this...

— Ricardo Claro, A eso de...

In the recording, Sebastián Piñera and his friend Diaz discussed how to trap Matthei in a television debate. They suggested bringing up the topic of divorce to make her feel uncomfortable due to her recognized conservatism and reveal certain contradictions of the candidate. For example, they aimed to demonstrate that Matthei professed Catholicism but did not practice it.

The idea is to elegantly try to leave her like a cabrita chica, you know, clueless, like she's stumbling in the dark without any firmness, do you understand me or not?

— Sebastián Piñera

Piñera was invited to the debate program but was not on camera when the tape was played. He appeared after a commercial break, took responsibility for what was said in the context of a private conversation, and questioned the act of espionage.

Aftermath

The program A eso de... came to an end after the host, Jaime Celedón, and panelists Jorge Andrés Richards, Héctor Riesle, Pilar Molina, and Tomás Jocelyn-Holt resigned on camera on Sunday, August 30, 1992, following the scandal.

Amid the ensuing controversy, journalist Santiago Pavlovic conducted an interview with an anonymous Army intelligence agent for TVN in September 1992, who confirmed that the Army was intercepting phone calls from members of political parties across the political spectrum.

In an interview with Raquel Correa that was published in El Mercurio on November 1, 1992, Sebastián Piñera confirmed that members of National Renewal had prior knowledge of the tape, thereby violating a party order that prohibited its members from discussing the episode.

It was known what would happen on the program A eso de..., based on testimonies, evidence, background information, and acknowledgments. And ac-knowl-edge-ments. There are people who have admitted to me that they heard it.

— Sebastián Piñera

On November 7 of that year, Evelyn Matthei broke her silence and took full responsibility for the episode, announcing her withdrawal from the presidential pre-candidacy. During the press conference, she claimed that the tape had been given to her by an "amateur radio operator" whom she did not know. However, a few days later, the Army released a statement saying that Captain Fernando Diez, a member of a telecommunications branch of the Armed Forces, had confessed to recording the tape and giving it to Matthei on his own initiative.

In 1993, Matthei left National Renewal and, in 1999, became a member of the Independent Democratic Union.

That same year, the retail chain Supertiendas ABC (now Abcdin) parodied the scandal in a commercial advertisement related to its Kioto brand radio recorders (an exclusive brand of ABC from that time until today). In the ad, a customer, apparently a spy, enters an ABC store to buy a radio recorder and asks the salesman to be discreet, to which the salesman replies, "Could it be a Kioto radio" that the customer wanted to buy.

In 2001, Alberto Espina stated in an interview that it had been a mistake for National Renewal to let two of its presidential candidates directly confront each other, leading to the impasse.

The fault is ours: it was bad for the party that Evelyn and Sebastián rose without going through the test of whiteness, and we allowed it. They entered through the window and I don't criticize them for that: the mistake is ours. We elevated two people without a party history, who did not burn each stage one by one. Neither of them was able to garner the support of at least a third of their peers in Congress. The lack of institutionalism was so great that neither of them had the ability to resign: something that Jarpa did with Büchi in the past presidential elections. Now, they don't do it because they are bad people. The political concept of Evelyn and Sebastián is pure efficiency... It's the world of business, without mercy. Where the competition is strong.

— Alberto Espina

Ultimately, as a result of the incident, National Renewal chose to go with a third candidate, independent lawyer and businessman Manuel Feliú.

Piñera went on to become President twice, serving from 2010 to 2014 and from 2018 to 2022. Meanwhile, Matthei stayed in Congress and later became the coalition's presidential candidate in 2013. They remained on good terms with each other, and Matthei even served as minister during Piñera's first presidency.