Lucía Hiriart de Pinochet
Encyclopedia
Chile
Chile ,officially the Republic of Chile , is a country in South America occupying a long, narrow coastal strip between the Andes mountains to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, and the Drake Passage in the far...
an dictator
Dictator
A dictator is a ruler who assumes sole and absolute power but without hereditary ascension such as an absolute monarch. When other states call the head of state of a particular state a dictator, that state is called a dictatorship...
Augusto Pinochet
Augusto Pinochet
Augusto José Ramón Pinochet Ugarte, more commonly known as Augusto Pinochet , was a Chilean army general and dictator who assumed power in a coup d'état on 11 September 1973...
. She was First Lady of Chile
First Ladies of Chile
First Lady of Chile is the unofficial title for the wife of the President of Chile. In colonial times the wives of the Royal Governors were known as Presidentas, title that was in use during the first half of the 19th century, but was slowly superseded by the newer of First Lady...
from 1973 to 1990.
Biography
Hiriart was born on 10 December 1922 in AntofagastaAntofagasta
Antofagasta is a port city in northern Chile, about north of Santiago. It is the capital of Antofagasta Province and Antofagasta Region. According to the 2002 census, the city has a population of 296,905...
to Osvaldo Hiriart Corvalán, a lawyer and former Radical Party
Radical Party (Chile)
The Radical Party of Chile was a Chilean political party. It was formed in 1863 by a split in the Liberal Party. Not coincidently, it was formed shortly after the organization of the Grand Lodge of Chile, and it has maintained a close relationship with Chilean Freemasonry throughout its life...
senator and former Interior Minister of president Juan Antonio Ríos
Juan Antonio Ríos
Juan Antonio Ríos Morales was a Chilean political figure, and President of Chile from 1942 to 1946, during the height of World War II. He died in office.-Early life:...
; and Lucía Rodríguez Auda de Hiriart, of French
French people
The French are a nation that share a common French culture and speak the French language as a mother tongue. Historically, the French population are descended from peoples of Celtic, Latin and Germanic origin, and are today a mixture of several ethnic groups...
descent.
Hiriart married Chile
Chile
Chile ,officially the Republic of Chile , is a country in South America occupying a long, narrow coastal strip between the Andes mountains to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, and the Drake Passage in the far...
an army general Augusto Pinochet Ugarte
Augusto Pinochet
Augusto José Ramón Pinochet Ugarte, more commonly known as Augusto Pinochet , was a Chilean army general and dictator who assumed power in a coup d'état on 11 September 1973...
on January 30, 1943). They had five children: three daughters (Inés Lucía
Lucía Pinochet
Inés Lucía Pinochet Hiriart is the eldest daughter of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet and Lucía Hiriart de Pinochet....
, María Verónica, Jacqueline Marie) and two sons (Augusto Osvaldo and Marco Antonio).
In 2005 Hiriart was sued by the Chilean Internal Revenue Service ("Servicio de Impuestos Internos") over tax evasion totaling US$2.35 million and was arrested for a full day with son Marco Antonio a few months later. In October 2007, she was arrested again in the frame of the Riggs
Riggs Bank
Riggs Bank was a Washington, D.C.-based commercial bank with branches located in the surrounding metropolitan area and offices around the world. For most of its history, it was the largest bank in the nation's capital. Riggs had been controlled by the Albritton family since the 1980s, but they lost...
case, along with Pinochet's five children and 17 other persons (including two generals, one of his ex-lawyer and his ex-secretary) on charges of embezzlement
Embezzlement
Embezzlement is the act of dishonestly appropriating or secreting assets by one or more individuals to whom such assets have been entrusted....
and use of false passports. They are accused of having illegally transferred $27m (£13.2m) to foreign bank accounts during Pinochet's rule.