SQM’s Ponce Fined $70 Million in Record Chile Sanctions

Chile handed down record fines for illegal share trading to executives including Julio Ponce, controller of Latin America’s biggest fertilizer maker, and Leonidas Vial, an owner of Chile’s largest stock brokerage.

Ponce was sanctioned $70 million for enriching himself at the expense of other shareholders in a series of holding companies that controls Soc. Quimica & Minera de Chile SA, the securities regulator, known as SVS, said in an e-mailed statement today. The fines for Ponce and his alleged associates totaled $164 million. The sanctions were “unjust,” Ponce’s lawyer, Raimundo Labarca, said in an e-mailed statement.