Middle class bonus: 15 thousand of the 437 thousand people questioned have returned the money

Last Friday, the Internal Revenue Service (SII) reported that 437,703 dependent workers accessed the middle class bonus without meeting the requirements. Of these, 37,100 are state officials.

Along with that announcement, the SII said that it established a procedure for workers to restore the amounts unduly received, without readjustments, fines or interest, through a platform available on the website of the General Treasury of the Republic, until 30 of November. Once this process is concluded, the actions regarding those who do not make this return will be determined.

Consulted the SII, it indicated that since Saturday some 15 thousand badly awarded bonds have been restored. The amount includes part of the refunds that were made this Thursday.

According to the audit service, movements on the site began with greater frequency once the SII released the information and began to notify taxpayers that they were in this situation, that is, since Saturday.

The Public Ministry made the decision to open a criminal investigation in the case of fraudulent obtaining of the Middle Class Bond. This, after the SII reported that some 437,703 dependent workers presented differences between the amount that they self-declared as taxable salary for July 2020 at the time of requesting that benefit and the real one, calculated from their mandatory pension contributions or from what is actually received. . The agency specified that with respect to all of them, the legal requirement of having a decrease of 30% or more in their salaries for that month, with respect to the average total income of 2019, was not met.

For this reason, the national prosecutor, Jorge Abbott, officiated at the beginning of October to the director of the SII, Fernando Barraza, requesting the complete list of the people who committed the infractions. That time, the Public Ministry reported that the investigation could be for the possible crimes of fraud of subsidies, perjury, among other illicit crimes.

The decision was made this Thursday and the Los Lagos regional prosecutor, Carmen Gloria Wittwer, was appointed in charge of the case. The persecutor must make decisions regarding how the criminal prosecution of the almost 440,000 people involved will be. This, because knowledgeable about the matter assures that the first objective will be to ensure that the people who did not receive the benefit can return it.

In fact, after the SII information was released, some people have reported themselves, some have already started the refund process and others have also asked the SII to reconsider their remuneration data. This, because the almost 500 thousand people were notified by email.

Sources familiar with the case assure that the investigation of the prosecutor Wittwer will include the special criminal types that were included in the law of this bond. These are articles 11 of Law 21,242 and article 12 of Law 21,252. These norms establish that “persons who obtain the benefit established in this law by means of simulation or deception and who, in the same way, obtain a benefit greater than that which corresponds to them, will be sanctioned with minor imprisonment in their minimum to medium degree.”

“(Will be investigated) all the facts related to the fraudulent obtaining of the Middle Class bond, events that occurred throughout the country that are related to people who had requested this bond without having the right to do so,” Wittwer said yesterday.

Close to the investigation, they assure that the SII has not yet responded to Abbott’s office by handing over the payroll of the almost 440,000 involved. In turn, the same sources indicate that the scenario is being analyzed with respect to those who, being public officials, requested the bonus since there was no decrease in their income with respect to them.