The Growing Ecosystems of Criminality Across South America in a Threat Convergence World. In Focus: Chile and the Southern Cone
“If Chile falls into the clutches of organized crime, South America begins to become a regional haven for a variety of malicious actors and threat networks.”
David M. Luna, Executive Director, ICAIE
Executive Summary
Chile is strategically located in South America, bridging the trans-Pacific economies of Latin America and Asia, and serves as a bridge to bi-directional trade eastward in the Southern Cone, and onward to the South Atlantic and Indian oceans. Chile is a dynamic center for international commerce, trade, and finance that is being severely impacted by criminal market penetration and multiple socio-economic factors.
This includes the growth on non-Chilean criminal groups, the expansion of local criminal gangs and rising violence from territorial disputes among multiple national and international criminal structures fighting over the growing number of lucrative illicit markets.
Chile is now flooded with an array of illicit goods and contraband, either manufactured illegally within the country, or smuggled through its efficient by poorly secured ports, or across borders from surrounding hubs of illicit trade in the Southern Cone of South America (“Southern Cone”). These include Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay, Peru, and Uruguay.
Because Chile is also a country with a high standard of living but with rapidly growing migration communities–particularly Venezuelans–Chile also offers multiple comparative and competitive advantages to transnational criminal organizations. This makes the country an attractive threat convergence center to arbitrage illicit goods across borders, serving as a low-risk, high reward market that enables criminals to profit from illicit trade.
The growing complexity and rapid expansion of Chile’s illicit markets and the comparative advantages its institutional stability and functioning economic infrastructure have pushed Chile to a tipping point. Unless significant intelligence, law enforcement, and financial control reforms are instituted in a sustainable way, Chile runs the very real risk of losing its privileged position as one of Latin America’s most functional democracies based on the rule of law.
The case of Ecuador over the past five years, with surge in homicides, the influx of extra-regional transnational criminal organization, extreme violence among groups seeking to control ports, key territory and prisons, offers a dramatic case study of how a country can collapse institutionally unless these challenges are faced directly, forcefully and quickly.
The fact that Chile’s civil society, private sector and political parties across the political spectrum now recognize that transnational organized crime and its massive illicit economies present and existential threat to the nation, has opened a window of opportunity to creatively and forcefully take on the challenge of these new and rapidly evolving dangers.
Combatting these threats, both in Chile and region, require a deeper understanding of the drivers of the advance of criminal structures, the structures themselves and the development of holistic, multifaceted strategies to face the expanding set of complex threats.
Public-Private Partnerships to Counter Illicit Economies
The International Coalition Against Illicit Economies (ICAIE) is uniquely positioned to lead a project working with a diverse group of stakeholders, to form a united anti-illicit trade coalition. ICAIE, which has a memorandum of understanding with the Organization of American States (OAS), and with other organizations, to partner in combatting organized crime, will leverage its network of highly experienced law enforcement, criminologists, illicit trade and data experts, and corporate supply chain professionals specializing in Chile and the Southern Cone to map and design a whole-of-society strategy to combat these threats. This will endeavor to include an ICAIE network of high-level independent observatories dedicated to the analysis, study, and monitoring of illicit markets and economies that can share research, information and methodologies.
Invited experts will examine illegal trade activities related to Chile’s illicit markets in the sub-regional context, including mapping illicit pathways in neighbors with porous borders, including Bolivia, Peru and Argentina. This multifaceted framework will also help to provide a real time, dynamic panoramic security landscape to be used for making recommendations through sub-regional dialogues.
This process will include policy briefs on short-term and long-term policy approaches, strategies and needed actionable law enforcement responses that will more comprehensively disrupt transnational criminal threats and the various illicit vectors impacting Chile, and neighboring Southern Cone countries.
Two common drivers of expanding illicit markets that must be addressed are: the growing presence of the Venezuela-born Tren de Aragua criminal structure now operating in Chile, Peru and Bolivia and displacing traditional criminal groups; and the ongoing takeover of prisons and the control criminal leaders exercise over multiple criminal enterprises from the safety of incarceration in these now secure environments.
Building a Sub-Regional Network to Counter
ICAIE will launch a new “Clean Markets” Project to partner with multiple stakeholders to help position Chile as a leader in fighting illicit trade in the Southern Cone, and across LATAM and international markets. We will do this by showcasing its leadership and emerging plans to implement effective administrative, policy, law enforcement, intelligence and customs actions to counter transnational crime and related illicit finance including in Free Trade Zones (FTZs) and ports.
The ICAIE “Clean Markets” Project aims to create a dynamic multi-layered framework and a public-private partnership in Chile. The Project will bring together leaders from across social sectors, markets, industries, and communities to work with the Government of Chile and the private sector to promote greater transparency, combat illicit trade, enhance anticorruption efforts, and strengthen law enforcement and the necessary intelligence structures. The initiative will similarly work with committed partners to clean markets in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay, Peru, and Uruguay.
Through cross-market alliances in the Southern Cone and public-private partnerships, Chile and other governments can develop the necessary reforms, legislative authorities, best practices and other specific measures that can help strengthen transparency and rule of law, provide law enforcement and intelligence agencies with the necessary legal authorities, and reduce vulnerability to criminalized trade. Not only will this give the whole of society tools to fight the rising criminal activities and economies, but these tools will also bolster confidence in markets and enhance cross-border cooperation to disrupt and dismantle illicit threat networks.
Effective legal, regulatory, and customs measures can also help better monitor cross-border illicit economies and bring greater transparency in the supervision, control, and inspection of licit economies and products within Chile, and surrounding countries. At the same time, these efforts will help to stem and prevent illicit trade, money laundering, and the financing of corruption, organized crime, and terrorism in all markets where trade is invoked through its jurisdiction.
With broad-based political, social and private sector support from key partners in the region and international community, the project can help to ensure markets become a place for “clean business” in Chile and in participating Southern Cone countries, garnering greater trust and integrity across markets and supply chains.
ICAIE’s over-arching goal will be to support committed governments and private sectors partners to harness the political will across the Southern Cone to fight both cross-border and domestic illicit trade, including illicit goods and contraband, through a multi-layered framework, dynamic public-private partnerships, and greater engagement with private sector, business leaders, and relevant academia and civil society partners.
CONVERGING ILLICIT MARKETS BECOME THREAT MULTIPLIERS
As noted above, criminal threat networks, corrupt facilitators and enablers, and money launderers are gravitating to illicit markets to generate greater profits due to the low-risk, high-reward nature of hubs of illicit trade. Through such threat convergence, these bad actors are financing greater violence, insecurity, and instability from the criminally derived proceeds of illicit trade, and in the process, governments lose revenue through illegal trade practices, criminal evasion of border controls, corruption of customs and law enforcement officials, and cross-border smuggling and trafficking operations.
Among the transnational criminal organizations now active in Chile are:
- The Tren de Aragua, a prison-based Venezuelan criminal consortium backed by the Maduro regime in Venezuela, that is now taking over multiple illicit economies with a specific focus on ports, strategic illicit pathways and hubs of informal economic activities. This group often allows local criminal groups to operate as “franchises,” meaning they can use the brand name of the Tren de Aragua and pay a percentage of their criminal proceeds to the original group. This group is involved in multiple criminal market economies, including human trafficking, synthetic drugs, sexual slavery and prostitution, extortion, and contraband products such as cigarettes, fake or stolen pharmaceuticals, and weapons.
- The Bang of Fujian, a criminal organization originating from Fujian province in China. The group has established a significant presence in Chile, particularly in drug trafficking. Since at least 2019, this organization has been involved in illicit activities primarily related to the specialized cultivation of marijuana strains for international markets, as well as other illegal economies linked to the smuggling of cigarettes, pharmaceuticals, and counterfeit goods.
- Regional criminal groups such as the Colombian Los Chotas structure, and Dominican groups like Los Trinitarios have also settled in the country, focusing mainly on drug trafficking and territorial control. These groups follow the irregular migration paths usually pioneered by the Tren de Aragua.
- U.S., European and regional law enforcement officials have also documented the presence of major transnational criminal organizations, including the Italian ‘Ndrangheta, the Turkish mafia, the Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation cartels, the Brazilian PCC, among others. The presence of these groups in Chile, particularly the ‘Ndrangheta and Turkish mafias, appear to be in the exploratory phase to see if they can replicate their success in establishing ongoing operations in Ecuador, Argentina and Brazil.
Included among the notorious illicit trade criminalities in Chile and Southern Cone countries are:
Alcohol (Illegal)
South America produces some of the best wines that are exported around the world. It is estimated that illicit sources account for 25% of total worldwide adult alcoholic consumption. Like the illegal tobacco trade (below), contributing factors in fake alcohol include the higher cost of legal products from taxes, weak laws, lack of enforcement and social acceptance of contraband in some countries. Illicit alcohol also presents a serious public health problem with numerous reports of fatal cases of poisoning due to the ingestion of illicit alcohol. The sale of illicit wine is big business globally, as some organizations have reported that one bottle in five is counterfeit including bottles bearing labels of famous brands from France, Australia, Chile, Argentina, the United States, and other countries.
Cigarettes (Illicit)
In recent years, Chile has had to confront higher rates of inflation, migration, organized crime, and other social and economies pressures that have driven illicit trade in the country, from counterfeits and opioids to illegal tobacco and alcohol products. As with other goods that are heavily tax-excised, the higher price of legal cigarettes due to the levying of increased taxes has incentivized criminals to offer cheaper alternatives that have flooded the Chilean economy with duty-not-paid (DNP) cigarettes illegally imported or smuggled into the country. Illicit cigarettes from China, India, and other countries in Asia are also entering the Chilean market illegally.
Key Data Points:
- 47% of all cigarettes consumed in 2023 were illicit – this has risen to over 50% in 2024.
- 78% of the illicit cigarettes consumed in 2023 were produced in Paraguay.
- The remainder, mainly originate from Asia and are transited into Chile through Free Trade Zones in Chile and the easily permeable borders of Bolivia, Argentina and Peru.
- Illicit cigarettes were 34% of the average price of duty paid in 2023.
- In 2023, illicit cigarette prices were 2.0 times their level in 2013.
- Taxes made up 76% of the price of duty paid cigarettes in 2023.
- In 2023, sales of illicit cigarettes cost CLP 1,221 billion in lost tax receipts.
Counterfeits and IP Crimes
Counterfeit products from China have flooded Chilean markets and those of its neighbors in the Southern Cone, significantly affecting both national and international brands. With the inauguration of operations in the new PRC-controlled mega port in Chancay, Peru, this flood will likely grow by orders of magnitude.
This type of illicit trade not only infringes on intellectual property rights but also causes significant economic losses for legitimate businesses. The sale of counterfeit clothing and footwear often takes place in informal markets and through online platforms, where consumers can be misled by extremely low prices. Chile has become an attractive market for these products and a logistical hub receiving them through its ports, particularly those located in poorly regulated special trade zones such as Iquique. The Tren de Aragua and other criminal organizations tied to diaspora communities arriving through irregular migration play a major role in distribution of these counterfeit products.
The counterfeiting of electronic products, including cell phones and power tools, presents a significant challenge for Chilean authorities. Reports indicate that thousands of counterfeit chargers and headphones have entered the country without meeting safety regulations. These products are not only of inferior quality but can also be dangerous, potentially causing fires or electrical shocks due to poor manufacturing.
A notable case occurred when customs authorities uncovered a massive shipment of generic power tools bearing labels of well-known brands like Makita and Bosch. This type of counterfeiting not only violates trademark rights but also poses serious risks to end-user safety, as these tools often fail to meet required quality standards.
Cultural Heritage, Antiquities, Fake Coins
The illicit trafficking of cultural heritage, antiques from Incan and pre-Incan cultures is a concerning issue in Chile and the Southern Cone region. This phenomenon involves both the illegal export of cultural goods from Chile and the use of the country as a transit point for trafficking originating in neighboring nations with significant pre-Spanish civilizations such as Peru and Bolivia.
Although Chile has taken significant measures to combat the illicit trafficking of cultural goods, strategies for the identification, prevention, and recovery of these items do not fully align with practical needs in addressing the phenomenon or customs control. This is partly because many of these trafficked items originate from neighboring countries with more specialized controls. Chilean legislation prohibits the export of various cultural goods, including archaeological artifacts and fossils; however, the effectiveness of this regulation has not been matched by sufficient technical detection capabilities.
Drugs, Cannabis and Opioids
Due to its proximity to some of the world’s largest cocaine-producing countries- bordering Bolivia and Peru, and in close proximity to Ecuador, Colombia, and Venezuela- Chile remains a destination and transit country for domestic consumption, and for transshipment through its ports to Europe, Oceania, and Asia. While marijuana is smuggled from Paraguay, in recent years Chile has also become a producer of cannabis with a higher THC content. Similarly, as cocaine markets shift to Europe, the former Soviet Union and elsewhere outside the United States, Southern Cone countries have become increasingly important as gateways high transit zones for the movement of cocaine and heroin produced in the northern Andean region to markets in the U.S., Europe, and Asia.
Key Data Points:
- The INCB has reported an 8-fold increase in opioid consumption in Chile since 2000.
- Chile currently exhibits the highest per-capita opioid consumption in Latin America.
- Chile’s ports are increasingly being exploited as major trafficking routes into Europe for cocaine and other illegal goods.
- Chile’s ports are becoming increasingly important hubs for the distribution of precursor chemicals from China for the production of synthetic drugs. As in other countries, synthetic drug production and trafficking will soon become one of the most complex challenges for Chile’s economically vital ports.
Environmental Crimes: Gold Smuggling, Critical Minerals, and Endangered Species (Wildlife/Flora)
Environmental crimes are increasing significantly in Chile especially related to illegal logging. Exotic animals across the Amazon and Andes including amphibians, birds, plants are being smuggled into Chile to be exported to demand markets. Similarly, smuggled gold from Peru and the Amazon transits Chile en route to markets in UAE, Europe, and the United States. Gold cartels have been arrested in recent years in the smuggling and trafficking of hundreds of millions of dollars worth of illegal gold. Chile has also experienced the theft of precious metals such as copper, silver, platinum, and rhodium. Recent seizures at Chile’s ports indicate that the stolen metals are exported to Asia, mainly to China.
Key Data Points:
- Chilean gold clan (Clan de Oro) has lucrative cross-border illicit trafficking ventures in UAE, Switzerland, United States, and other gold markets.
- In 2022, copper thefts totaled USD 88.2 million, alongside more than 22,000 thefts of electrical transmission cables. This represented an average of 60 crimes per day, affecting over 2 million people. Chilean Customs intercepted several illegal export attempts, including the seizure of over 12 tons of stolen cables that same year.
- In January 2024, five individuals were arrested while transporting one ton of stolen copper concentrate from Minera Escondida. Additionally, stolen copper cathodes have been identified in international markets, primarily in Asia and Europe.
- In 2024, the theft of electrical transmission cables affected more than 165,000 customers, causing economic losses exceeding USD 2.19 billion.
- During the first half of 2024 alone, 2,822 thefts of mining trucks were recorded, highlighting a criminal focus on vehicles used for transporting minerals.
Human Trafficking and Forced Labor
Chile remains a source, transit and destination for human trafficking, where victims from across Latin America and Asia are exploited for the sex trade and forced labor in the mining, agriculture, construction, garment, hospitality, restaurant and other domestic service sectors. The recent COVID-19 pandemic and migrations – in particular from Venezuela and Haiti – have further accelerated criminality related to human smuggling including at unauthorized border crossings, and criminally-operated travel agencies and leased flights.
Vehicles
Chile is one of South America’s largest hubs for the supply and transit of stolen vehicles from across the continent. Chile has a modern and easily accessible automotive market compared to neighboring countries and the criminal market for vehicle theft is not solely explained by domestic demand; many stolen vehicles are sent to countries such as Bolivia, where they are exchanged for cocaine, as well as to Paraguay, Brazil, Peru, and more recently, Venezuela. In Venezuela, legal modifications have allowed these vehicles to enter with less scrutiny. In the port city of Iquique, thousands of vehicles set to be exported by cargo trucks to Paraguay and Bolivia.
Key Data Points:
- In 2023, over 28,000 vehicle thefts were reported nationwide, with approximately 8,200 violent robberies concentrated in the Metropolitan Region. This marks an increase compared to previous years, although certain months showed a downward trend.
- According to the Chilean Association of Insurers (AACh), 14,297 insured vehicles were reported stolen in 2023, a 17% decrease compared to 2022. However, this figure remains higher than pre-2021 historical levels.
- Behind these figures, cases of customs, credit, and insurance fraud have been detected.
Counterfeit Pharmaceuticals
The introduction of counterfeit pharmaceuticals into the legal market in Chile and the region is a growing concern. These products, often dangerous and harmful, are difficult to detect and can have severe consequences for public health. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that up to 10% of medicines in developed countries could be counterfeit, a figure that may be significantly higher in developing nations.
Weapons
The illegal trafficking of firearms and firearm components in Chile has seen a significant increase in recent years, raising concerns about public safety and its ties to organized crime.
Key Data Points:
- Black market prices for stolen firearms are significantly higher than their original retail prices. For instance, stolen rifles have been sold for USD 2,500, while pistols can fetch prices ranging from USD 350 to 600. Because Chile has a highly regulated legal firearms market and guns are in increasing demand, the price of acquiring weapons in Chile is likely to continue to rise.
Public-Private Partnerships: Collective Action
Everything is connected, especially in the dark world of criminality.
There is a growing body of evidence to indicate that the funds raised from the ‘so-called’ low-risk, high-reward crimes, such as trade in illicit cigarettes and alcohol are linked to other criminal activities, including drug and people smuggling, sexual slavery and prostitution, extortion and kidnapping. The recent case of Los Gallegos, a violent faction of the Tren de Aragua, showed the intersection and overlap of these illicit economies.
The success of the ICAIE project centers on harnessing determined leadership across the public and private sectors in concerted action with cross-industry partners and other critical stakeholders to develop an array of specific measures, guidelines, good practices, and policy deliverables that would help strengthen transparency and regulation across markets, and serve as an AIT model across economies internationally.
Among the critical objectives of the project will be to support committed governments and private sector leadersto control further expansion of illicit markets in Chile, and across the Southern Cone; to garner more coordinated robust enforcement actions across borders; to increase government revenues; and to ensure legitimate cross-border commerce is not subverted by criminality and related corruption. The ultimate objective is to create a legal environment supported by the rule of law that does not permit illicit economies to grow to become an existential threat to democratic institutions, open markets and FTZs, and the state itself.
With support from key partners from the region and international community including across sectors, industries, and communities, the project will aim to assist participating economies to become “clean markets” that garner greater trust and integrity across the Americas, and internationally.
Find also ICAIE’s Report on Emerging Transnational Organized Crime Threats in Latin America: Converging Criminalized Markets & Illicit Vectors, here.
ICAIE Interview with El Mostrado (Chile) published on 24 January 2025
David M. Luna, experto en crimen organizado: Chile podría enfrentar crisis de seguridad como Ecuador
Por : Carlos Basso Prieto
Unidad de Investigación de El Mostrador
24 enero, 2025
El exdiplomático y exfuncionario de seguridad nacional estadounidense señala que si no se adoptan medidas concretas para combatir al crimen organizado y las economías ilícitas que este genera, el país puede perder la posición privilegiada que tiene en el concierto regional.
Una agenda más que agitada cumplió en Santiago David M.Luna, el director de la Coalición Internacional contra las Economías Ilícitas (ICAIE, por sus siglas en inglés). Fue diplomático, asesor presidencial y funcionario de seguridad nacional en Estados Unidos. Hoy encabeza una red de observatorios sobre economías ilícitas en Asia, Europa, África y las Américas, y estuvo en Chile sosteniendo una serie de reuniones con autoridades gubernamentales, gremios y la sociedad civil, como un preludio a la presentación -en mayo de este año- de un informe sobre mercados ilícitos en Chile y el Cono Sur de las Américas, en el cual también participaron asesores del ICAIE, como el experto en crimen organizado chileno Pablo Zeballos y el periodista estadounidense Douglas Farah.
Gracias al trabajo de campo realizado, explicó Luna a El Mostrador, “hemos evidenciado la creciente penetración en Chile y en toda la región del Cono Sur, de carteles y otras redes ilícitas, como el Tren de Aragua, el PCC brasileño, las mafias euroasiáticas, las tríadas chinas y Hezbolá, por ejemplo, en Chile, abarcando mercados clave e industrias críticas, así como la influencia corruptora que ejercen, que erosiona la integridad de las instituciones públicas”. Pese al diagnóstico, señala que “con la llegada de Donald J. Trump se espera que Estados Unidos eleve la lucha contra los carteles de la droga y el crimen organizado, el lavado de dinero y el comercio ilícito en todo el continente americano”.
—Hace un par de semanas, la policía y la Fiscalía de Antofagasta descubrieron un laboratorio de metanfetaminas, el primero que se encuentra en Chile, que era manejado por dos mexicanos que se cree son del CJNG. También hemos tenido operaciones del Cartel de Sinaloa. ¿Qué tan peligrosa es la llegada de estos carteles en específico a un país como este?
—La creciente presencia de carteles mexicanos y otros grupos debería preocupar a todos los chilenos, no solo por el incremento de la violencia que desata el tráfico de drogas mortales como el fentanilo o las metanfetaminas, sino por la inseguridad, que comienza a desestabilizar al país. Esta es una realidad, debido a la proximidad de Chile con algunos de los mayores productores de cocaína, que son sus países vecinos, en el caso de Bolivia y Perú. También, por su cercanía con Ecuador, Colombia y Venezuela, Chile es un lugar de tránsito de drogas, pero también de destino para consumo doméstico, y para trasvasijar por medio de sus puertos a Europa, Asia y Oceanía.
Así, pese a que la marihuana es contrabandeada desde Paraguay, en los últimos años Chile se ha convertido también en un productor de cannabis con alto grado de THC (es decir, el factor alucinógeno de la planta). Igualmente, a medida que los mercados de la cocaína han ido moviéndose hacia Europa, Rusia y otros lugares que no son Estados Unidos, los países del Cono Sur se han ido convirtieron en zonas de tránsito para mover cocaína desde las regiones andinas hacia los mercados de Europa y Asia.
—¿Cuál es la situación de los puertos chilenos, más allá del tema de la droga?
—Los puertos de Chile están siendo utilizados cada vez más como rutas de tráfico importantes hacia Europa, no solo para la cocaína, sino para otros bienes ilegales, sobre todo de los productos falsificados que vienen desde China y que llegan a través de los principales puertos de América Latina. Con la inauguración de operaciones en el nuevo megapuerto controlado por la República Popular de China en Chancay, Perú, es probable que este flujo crezca de manera exponencial. Hay que tener en cuenta que este tipo de comercio ilícito no solo infringe los derechos de propiedad intelectual, sino que también causa pérdidas económicas significativas para las empresas legítimas. La venta de ropa y calzado falsificados a menudo tiene lugar en mercados informales y a través de plataformas en línea, donde los consumidores pueden ser engañados por precios extremadamente bajos. Chile se ha convertido en un mercado atractivo para estos productos y un centro logístico que los recibe a través de sus puertos, particularmente aquellos ubicados en zonas de comercio especial poco reguladas, como Iquique. La rápida expansión de los mercados ilícitos de Chile y las ventajas comparativas de su estabilidad institucional y su infraestructura económica funcional han llevado a Chile a un punto crítico.
La economía ilícita de los cigarrillos
Otra economía ilícita en la cual Luna señala que es necesario poner atención es el contrabando de cigarrillos, una actividad casi tan lucrativa como el narcotráfico y que alcanza enormes volúmenes. En ese sentido, señala que “entre los mercados ilícitos que siguen atrayendo a criminales se encuentra el comercio ilegal de tabaco, que aprovecha que hay elevados impuestos sobre los cigarrillos legales e inunda los mercados en Chile con cigarrillos más baratos, que no han pagado impuestos y que son importados ilegalmente o contrabandeados al país, especialmente desde Paraguay, a través de Bolivia”.
En el mismo sentido, precisa que “el 47 % de todos los cigarrillos consumidos en 2023 en Chile eran ilícitos. De ese total, el 78 % fue producido en Paraguay. La cifra de consumo de cigarrillos ilegales en Chile subió a más de 50 % en 2024 y las pérdidas en evasión de impuestos se calculan en una cifra del orden de los US$ 1.221 millones”.
—Quince años atrás, Ecuador era uno de los países más seguros de América Latina. ¿Existe alguna posibilidad de que Chile termine viviendo algo semejante a lo que hoy ocurre allá?
—Chile es un refugio financiero atractivo para el lavado de dinero sucio por parte de operadores de lavado de dinero chino, financistas de Hezbolá y habilitadores profesionales que ayudan al Tren de Aragua, los carteles y otras organizaciones criminales a reinvertir los ingresos derivados de delitos en la economía formal, incluyendo bienes raíces, hoteles, restaurantes y otras industrias. Mi temor es que Chile solo atraerá más financiamiento ilícito a medida que los criminales penetren más en sectores y comunidades chilenas. A menos que se implementen reformas significativas en inteligencia, aplicación de la ley y control financiero de manera sostenible, Chile corre el riesgo real de perder su posición privilegiada como una de las democracias más funcionales de América Latina basadas en el Estado de derecho, y podría enfrentar una crisis de seguridad como Ecuador, donde funcionarios corruptos y actores criminales capturan el Estado y la economía. Si Chile cae en las garras del crimen organizado, América del Sur comienza a convertirse en un refugio regional para una variedad de actores malintencionados y redes de amenazas.
ICAIE Washington DC, ICAIE Santiago de Chile