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The regional prosecutor of Aysén, Carlos Palma, issued an arrest warrant against 800 active and retired soldiers for a fraud within the Chilean Army worth about 3,000 million dollars (about 2,450 million euros).
The investigation began in 2018 and, according to the Public Ministry and the Chilean Investigative Police (PDI), public funds were used to pay private debts, according to the Chilean newspaper “El Mercurio.”
Palma already led in 2018 a registry in the Commands of Personnel, Telecommunications and Finance Directorate of the Army Headquarters in Santiago. At that time, there were just over 300 soldiers investigated.
The fraud was carried out through contracts for fees or payment of salaries to retired personnel and service commissions that were not made but where there was a payment as compensation for individual economic losses, all of this as a result of the termination of the FAM or Fund Mutual Aid, an informal solidarity aid system that operated in Coyhaique since 1950 and which was annulled by the Army in 2006.
The harsh penalties for tax fraud
“Once the Mutual Aid Fund was closed, measures were implemented to alleviate the damage caused to officials and at first, these measures were within the regulatory and legal framework, which was to carry out service commissions or give priority to those people who had been economically harmed, “Palma explained in 2018, in statements collected by the Chilean radio station RLN.
“However, and that is what is being investigated from the criminal point of view, at some point the service commissions were decreed and paid but they were not made; the work contracts that were signed did not carry in practice the realization of work, therefore there was an outflow of money without justification, and in some cases, extension of post-retirement benefits to a longer term than legally allowed, “he said.
The penalties for the crime of tax fraud, depending on the amounts and reiteration in the facts, range from 541 days of imprisonment to criminal penalties, that is, greater than five years and one day in jail.
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