The advance of organized crime pushes Chile to a new law to combat it

Members of the Investigative Police, PDI, make an arrest in Santiago, in October 2019.NurPhoto (via Getty Images)

Chile for the first time has a law against organized crime, given the emergence of a new crime.

It was agreed by the Chilean Congress, after three years of legislative processing.

The initiative entered Parliament in 2020, during the government of right-wing President Sebastián Piñera (2018-2022), while in September 2022 the Administration of Gabriel Boric made a series of indications.

“Behind the lockdowns [to remove cars] and vehicle theft, as well as the illegal trafficking of migrants or contraband, there are criminal organizations that have a business

and that they use the power of fire to take care of it,” said the Undersecretary of the Interior, Manuel Monsalve, on Tuesday.

The legislation restructures the crime of illicit association into two criminal types: criminal association and criminal association.

It also hits the patrimony of the organizations, because it incorporates, as occurs in the drug law, the confiscation of their profits, even in a modality without convictions.

“We are going to be able to catch these gangs where it hurts the most and where they are most vulnerable, which is because of the money they move,” added the Minister of the Interior, Carolina Tohá.

For Paulo Contreras, national chief against organized crime of the Investigative Police (PDI), “this law speeds up a concept that we already had, the illicit association, which was a surname to the underlying crime.

Today he distinguishes a criminal association and a criminal association.

The difference is the sentence and the criminal will always be stronger”, adds Contreras.

On Tuesday morning, the Chilean police found a man dead from two bullets to the head in the bathroom of an apartment in the center of Santiago de Chile, while a few meters away there were two other subjects with their hands tied.

Witnesses reported that, shortly before, three men had entered the building and then heard the shots.

The perpetrators did not steal species and fled quickly.

These types of cases are no longer isolated in Chile, as they would have been some five years ago.

It is an example of the security crisis that the country is experiencing, where homicides have experienced a 30% rise in one year, the use of firearms to commit them has increased and the number of unknown defendants in the murders has increased, that is, whose authors are not known.

This makes a very important difference compared to what happened until recently, when most homicides in Chile were due to fights, alcohol or drug use.

This meant that it was easier to investigate, as there was usually a link between the victim and the perpetrator.

This picture –rising homicides, the use of firearms and unknown defendants– is usually associated with organized crime, a phenomenon that is on the rise and for which Chile has just approved the first law in its history to combat it.

The arrival of kidnappings for extortion

In 2022, 38.5 tons of drugs were seized, according to figures from the Investigative Police (PDI).

In 2022, 33 tons.

"These are high numbers for the country," says Contreras, from the PDI.

Arms trafficking has also been on the rise.

“It is a conduct associated with other crimes, such as drug trafficking, human trafficking for sexual exploitation and gangs that are dedicated to kidnapping for extortion, which is a new crime in Chile, but which has a very high resolution capacity. ", Add.

Today security is the main concern of Chileans.

According to the survey of the Center for Public Studies (CEP) last January, 60% of the people consulted considered that crime, assaults and robberies are the main problem to which the Government of President Boric should devote its efforts.

They are followed by health, with 32%, and pensions, with 31% of the mentions.

Members of the Carabineros border a street in Santiago after a criminal action in January 2019. Esteban Felix (AP)

"Both in the criminal investigation and in the recovery of illegally obtained resources, this law is the most revolutionary since the return to democracy in 1990. It is not only a tremendous advance, it is also a current need," he told El COUNTRY Ignacio Castillo, director of the organized crime unit of the National Prosecutor's Office.

In parallel, Chile also modernized its legislation against drug trafficking.

Along the same lines, it tightened the confiscation, but also expanded the reporting of suspicious transactions to institutions that were not obliged to do so.

Among them, the automotive companies dedicated to the sale of new and used cars and also the breeders of fine-blooded horses, where drug traffickers usually invest their illicit profits.

the new crime

Ignacio Castillo, from the Prosecutor's Office, says that the new law is consistent with how the criminal phenomenon has changed in Chile.

"Certain crimes have increased which, in comparative experience, are much more associated with organized crime due to the way they are committed."

Among them, he explains, “the most classic is drug trafficking, which has been on the rise.

Also homicide with an unknown defendant, which has been increasing in our rate (4.6 per 100,000 inhabitants).

There are regions in the north, such as Tarapacá, where it has grown evidently, with 12.9 cases per 100,000 inhabitants.

That also happens in Arica and Antofagasta, also in the north”.

Another novelty is the incorporation of intrusive measures that until now were limited only to the drug law.

For example, surreptitious capture or recording, the use of undercover agents, informants, telephone tapping and, among others, remote access to computer equipment.

Call traffic and subscriber data may also be requested from the companies.

“Computers or cell phones will be able to be intervened without having to be associated with telephone monitoring [known as punctures].

Today a computer is an information center and this was not affected by monitoring.

Not only will it be possible to enter the physical equipment, but also the

, ”explains Contreras.

Chilean police officers at a crime scene near the Central Market in Santiago, in May 2020.NurPhoto (via Getty Images)

The police chief points out that, in addition, with the new law, new generation crimes can be investigated, such as environmental ones, which, until today, have been analyzed from the particular point of view and not as a criminal phenomenon.

“We believe that it is still a long way off, but we are

of entering into water traffic because, in essence, it is the most precious asset of natural resources”, he points out.

But Contreras especially highlights the effects that this legislation will have on the prosecution of two crimes that have burst "with great force" in the last three years in Chile as a result of the wave of irregular migration: human trafficking and drug trafficking. people for the purpose of sexual exploitation.

“This accelerated evolution was accentuated after the pandemic, which transformed certain criminal behaviors,” he says.

It is the scene in which the Tren de Aragua broke into Chile, a criminal organization of Venezuelan origin that is being investigated by several prosecutors in the north of the country for different crimes.

It is a peculiar gang, because it gives some kind of criminal franchises to other gangs –such as Los gallegos and Los valencianos– that are mainly dedicated to human trafficking to Chile and their sexual exploitation.

For both Contreras and Castillo, the Aragua Train is an example that meets all the characteristics of organized crime that has penetrated the South American country.

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