The Chilean National Customs Service filed a criminal complaint for smuggling after verifying that a Free Trade Zone importer did not have merchandise valued at more than $218 million and that it should have been in its warehouses.
The Regional Director of the Iquique Customs, Cristian Molina Silva, explained that there are differences both in the actual stock available and in the unavailable stock, “in simple terms There is merchandise that exists on paper and should be in two specific warehouses, but our inspectors confirmed that the products do not exist. As a result, a criminal complaint was filed against the Zona Franca user and anyone else found responsible.”
Molina Silva explained that based on inspection plans and the powers of Customs in favor of the protection of the community and the due protection of the fiscal interest, "A series of audits are carried out on different companies to verify proper compliance with current regulations. This is how our inspectors arrived at an importer and found that despite being active and operating in the free trade system, its two addresses had been occupied by other businesses for more than a year."
Following the above, all operations were verified, such as inventory control and official stock that appears in the electronic visa system of the Free Trade Zone and Customs, establishing that The company is listed with more than $218 million pesos in merchandise that is not physically in its warehouses and they are mostly cigarettes and liquor.
Customs filed a criminal complaint in the Court of Guarantee "because everything indicates that the public treasury is being defrauded. In addition, it is worth pointing out that these are not historical documents because we must remember that during 2016 and 2017, extensive work was done to support and organize the operations of the Free Trade Zone and more than 68 thousand documents were clarified," Molina Silva concluded.
The importer risks a corporal punishment of 541 to 3 years of minor imprisonment in its medium degree and a fine of 1 to 5 times the value of the merchandise or, in the case of cigarettes or liquor, a fine of 50 to 300% for corresponding to products subject to special or additional taxation.
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