Pinocheques were three Cheques of total USD 3,000,000 paid in mid-1989 by the Chilean army to Augusto Pinochet, Jr., the son of Augusto Pinochet for the purchase of bankrupt "Valmoval", a small rifle company in 1987.
But Pinochet's son wasn't under the rifle company's owner and no reason could be found for the payment.
The payment was investigated 1990 by a parlamentary investigative committee chaired by Jorge Schaulson.
On December 19, 1990 Pinochet stormed into the army headquarters and placed the 57,000 member force in alert, what the general called a "ejercicio de enlace" (Spanish for Link exercise) and asked to finish the investigation. Similar pressure was done in May 1993 again with boinazo (Spanish for Putsch with the beret).[1][2]
The Chilean justice continued to investigate the payment, but 1994 as the Chilean Supreme court had to decide about, the president of Chile Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle asked to stop the case because of Reasons of state.[3]
The disclosure of the Riggs Bank accounts reignited in 2005 the case against General Pinochet in Chile. Judge Manuel Valderrama investigated whether the three purchase checks for Valmoval wound up in the Pinochet's secret accounts but 2010 the suit was discontinued without results.[4]
The armed forces' ejercicio de enlace-standoff was the worst crisis of the (then) 3-year-old coalition government of President Patricio Aylwin.
