Codelco Fires Top Executives Over Cover-Up at El Teniente
Key Facts
— Key Points This is part of The Rio Times’ daily coverage of Latin American affairs and financial news.
— Chile’s Codelco dismissed its vice president of operations and two senior El Teniente managers after an internal audit uncovered concealment of technical data reported to regulators.
— The audit traced the cover-up to a 2023 rock burst at the mine, whose misreported aftermath preceded a deadly July 2025 collapse that killed six workers and shut down operations.
— The board ordered a radical reorganization of El Teniente, the world’s largest underground copper mine, whose output will remain depressed for about five years.
Codelco, the world’s largest copper producer, announced on Friday that it had fired its vice president of operations, Mauricio Barraza, along with El Teniente general manager Claudio Sougarret and project manager Rodrigo Andrades. The dismissals follow an internal audit that found executives concealed and misrepresented technical data submitted to Chile’s mining regulator after a rock burst at El Teniente on July 24, 2023.
The board cited “serious breaches of duty” and said it would share all findings with the relevant authorities. In a separate statement, it ordered a radical reorganization of the division, which will now report directly to Codelco’s executive committee, a move that reflects both the mine’s strategic importance and the depth of the governance failure.
The cover-up matters because it preceded a far deadlier event. On July 31, 2025, a seismically induced rock burst tore through the Andesita section of El Teniente, killing six contract workers and triggering a full operational shutdown that cost Codelco roughly $9 million a day. The accident was Chile‘s worst mining disaster in decades and prompted an international safety audit. Sougarret, ironically, had been brought in as general manager only last August to oversee the recovery from that very collapse.
El Teniente’s long recovery ahead
The production toll has been severe. El Teniente, which accounts for roughly a quarter of Codelco‘s output, produced around 310,000 tonnes of copper in 2025, after the accident erased some 45,000 tonnes from the year’s total. Just three days before his dismissal, Sougarret told Reuters the mine expected to produce 301,000 tonnes in 2026 and that output would remain depressed for about five years, far longer than the three-year timeline Codelco had originally projected.
Lindor Quiroga replaces Barraza as vice president of operations. Gustavo Reyes takes over as interim general manager of El Teniente. For Codelco, the shakeup extends beyond personnel: the state-owned miner closed 2025 with total divisional output of roughly 1.33 million tonnes, a marginal increase over the prior year but still well below the 1.7 million tonnes it produced before a prolonged investment drought. Restoring El Teniente to full capacity while rebuilding credibility with regulators and the families of the six dead workers will be the defining challenge for the company’s leadership in the years ahead.
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