It was not immediately clear what caused the accident in the Los Rios area, where rain fell on Tuesday afternoon.
Chile's National Disaster Prevention and Response Service said in a statement that a helicopter crashed in Lago Rancho, a rural town in southern Chile. First responders recovered Pinera's body. Toha did not recognize the other passengers.
President Gabriel Buric said in a televised speech that he had ordered three days of mourning.
“President Piñera has contributed to reaching great agreements for the benefit of the country,” Buric said. “He was a Democrat from the beginning.”
Buric cited the reconstruction led by Piñera after the 2010 earthquake that killed more than 500 people, his role in rescuing 33 miners after the San Jose mine collapse, and his leadership during the coronavirus pandemic.
Piñera, a billionaire centre-right politician, served two non-consecutive presidential terms – one from 2010 to 2014, and then from 2018 to 2022. His second term was marked by large protests over social inequality and two opposition-led attempts to impeach him. Presidents are not allowed to serve consecutive terms in Chile.
One of those attempts included the results of an investigation by The Washington Post and media partners led by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) that showed that a mining company partly owned by Piñera's children had been sold for $152 million to a close friend of Piñera's. Chilean businessman Carlos Alberto Delano. The sale took place in December 2010, roughly nine months into Piñera's first term as president.
The final payment in the deal was conditional on the government refusing to impose environmental protections on the mining area, a clause criticized by opposition politicians as a “dangerous” conflict of interest.
The House of Representatives voted to impeach him, and the Senate voted against him.
Piñera has denied any wrongdoing.
News of Piñera's death reverberated throughout the region, prompting condolences from leaders past and present.
“I am deeply pained by the death of my dear friend and colleague Sebastián Pinera,” Ivan Duque, Colombia’s right-wing president from 2018 to 2022, wrote on X. “Dear Sebastian, you will always be in our memories and we will defend it. Your legacy.”
Throughout his presidency, Piñera has championed democracy and human rights in the region — especially in Venezuela, where he has become a major supporter of opposition efforts to oust President Nicolas Maduro.
In 2017, under Piñera's mandate, Chile helped form the Lima Group, a consortium of more than a dozen Latin American countries created to find a peaceful solution to the humanitarian and political crises in Venezuela. He criticized what he described as “a dictatorship that only causes harm and does not intend to leave power,” and often called for international participation in restoring Venezuelan democracy.
After hearing the news of Piñera's death, exiled Venezuelan opposition leader Antonio Ledezma He praised and praised “His strong solidarity with the struggle of the Venezuelan people.”
This is a developing story and will be updated.
