SANTIAGO (Reuters) – Chilean authorities have arrested 55 people accused of tax fraud involving more than 100 fake companies in what Finance Minister Mario Marcel said on Friday was the largest tax fraud recorded in the country.
The state Internal Revenue Service (SII) filed complaints for nearly 100,000 false invoices issued between 2016 and 2022, and totaling around $276 million.
“Since 2016, a series of very irregular situations of fraud in the tax field began to be detected in a series of related companies,” Marcelo Freyhofer, deputy legal director of the service, told reporters on Friday.
“This procedure is fundamentally focused on the creation of companies with the sole objective of defrauding the treasury by issuing false invoices that are used by a series of taxpayers to pay less taxes,” he added.
The companies did not have commercial activity and were registered in various areas of the country in sectors such as construction, services and imports.
President Gabriel Boric made tax reform an electoral pledge and aimed to boost social spending through a new tax reform package but his original bill was shelved by legislators in March.
(Report by Fabián Andrés Cambero; Editing by Sandra Maler)
