Carabineros officers searched the La Cruz municipal offices on the morning of 11 November 2026 on the instructions of the La Calera prosecutor’s office.[1] Officers of Carabineros’ OS-9 unit seized electronic equipment and documents from the municipality, which were handed over voluntarily.[1] The recording captured mayor Filomena Navia Hevia of the Socialist Party reacting angrily after a municipal employee casually discovered a marijuana plantation.[1] The employee, named by local media as Jorge Torres Cid, had found the plants on 21 January while flying a drone over the 28 de Mayo neighbourhood to locate water wells as a fire-season reserve.[1] He photographed several large plants growing in a house yard and sent the pictures to his superior.[1]

In the recording the mayor tells him to do nothing about the find, saying she must protect herself because the PDI investigative police would seize the plants with great fanfare and people would call her an informer, adding that pursuing crime or a person with a cannabis plant was not her role.[1] She later said she had told the employee to do what fell to him under the administrative statute, placing the duty to report on him rather than on his superiors.[1] Torres said he went back the next day to gather more images for a complaint, but the plants were already gone.[1] A second account dates the drone flight to 21 January over the 28 de Marzo neighbourhood.[2] It says the employee found three planters with plants he identified as marijuana and sent the photographs directly to the mayor.[2] The local outlet that first published the audio places the well inspection in late February 2026.[3]

An investigation was opened for failure to report an offence under the drug law.[1] The La Calera guarantee court set the hearing to formally charge the mayor for 27 March 2027.[1] The comptroller’s office called the failure to report inexcusable.[1] On 2 November 2026 the Valparaíso electoral tribunal admitted a removal petition against the mayor filed by three opposition councillors over this case and other matters.[1] The petition cites a comptroller report of 16 October 2026 finding no record of municipal steps to notify the authorities until the case became public in August.[2] It also notes that the prosecutor’s office opened its own investigation while a related complaint was declared admissible on 12 August 2026.[2]