Chinese buyers were the end destination of a five-year smuggling pipeline that drained an estimated US$917 million worth of stolen copper from Chile, authorities said on Wednesday after police dismantled the network in one of the largest organised crime operations ever uncovered in the country.
The group trucked stolen metal to Iquique, a port city in Chile’s far north, and shipped it to China in containers disguised as scrap cargo. Over the same period, it collected more than US$55 million in fraudulent export VAT refunds, inserting stolen copper into Chile’s legitimate trade infrastructure for years without detection.
Coordinated across seven regions, the so-called Operation High Voltage ended with 25 arrests, raids on 49 properties and the seizure of 187 tonnes of copper, 40 vehicles and 11 firearms.
Authorities estimated the recovered metal was worth roughly US$2.2 million at current prices, a fraction of what the network moved over the five years it operated.
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