Chile Hunts Crypto Fortunes as Organized Crime Tests State Power

Chile is learning that organized crime no longer hides only behind guns, ports, and cash. As police trace digital fortunes across borders, President José Antonio Kast is seeking emergency powers, forcing a national debate over security, technology, and democratic restraint.

The Raid Now Begins With a Phone

In a modern raid, the smallest object may hold the largest fortune. Detectives still search for cash, weapons, and documents, but now their hands move toward a phone, laptop, or smart device. Inside may be the map that matters: accounts, transfers and a digital trail connecting street violence to distant money.

That changing search was central to a meeting in Santiago by Chile’s Investigative Police, or PDI. Specialists from Brazil, the United States, Australia, Spain, Estonia and South Korea gathered with Chilean institutions to compare forensic software and methods for tracing and seizing crypto assets before criminal organizations move them beyond reach.

PDI Director General Eduardo Cerna described the target not simply as a gang, but as the financial organism keeping it alive. Investigators must pursue its investments, wealth and protective structures, he said in remarks reported by EFE. The phrase was its “business vision.” A gunman can be replaced. A seized treasury is harder to rebuild.

That distinction matters in Chile, where crypto assets have appeared in organized crime investigations since at least 2020, according to Johnny Fica, head of the PDI’s organized crime prefecture. Speaking with EFE, Fica said digital assets have become a way to move resources and complicate detection. Yet traditional laundering continues, adjusted to each group’s territory, size and ambitions.

The result is a hybrid underworld. Cash still changes hands. Front businesses still produce respectable receipts. Conventional accounts, intermediaries and hidden ownership remain useful. Crypto adds speed, portability and distance. It does not replace the old laundering architecture. It gives that architecture another corridor.

Chile’s geography sharpens the problem. Unlike Bolivia or Peru, it is not a major drug-producing country. It is a consumer market and, through its ports, a distribution platform toward Asia, Europe and the United States. The same infrastructure that carries legitimate commerce can be exploited by networks that separate cargo, finance, and command across jurisdictions.

Crime Learns the Corporate Model

Spanish National Police Chief Inspector Marcos Alvar gave the emerging structure a memorable name in an EFE interview: “multinationals of crime.” The phrase is more than rhetoric. Criminal organizations have moved from vertical hierarchies toward dispersed networks that subcontract specialized services. One group controls territory, another transport, another digital transfers. Their members may never meet.

That modular system helps explain why investigations into Brazil’s Primeiro Comando da Capital and Comando Vermelho uncovered crypto-related operations totaling $1.1 billion. The figure should not automatically be read as profit. It reveals the scale of financial movement associated with organizations able to shift value through tools available anywhere with an internet connection.

The Tren de Aragua has likewise used crypto assets to remove millions from Chile, according to cases discussed at the Santiago gathering. Investigators in Chile, Colombia, Spain and Mexico have identified cryptocurrency platforms in routes tied to drug trafficking, sexual exploitation and other illegal markets. At street level, the harm remains physical. Higher up, the proceeds become passwords and transfers outrunning court orders.

Here lies the summit’s real importance. Software cannot solve a jurisdictional problem. Alvar told EFE that police, prosecutors, and judges must work together, especially when funds pass through countries that preserve banking secrecy or operate as tax havens. Tracing a wallet is only one step. Authorities must identify its controller, obtain legal authorization, coordinate abroad and prevent the assets from disappearing.

Estonia offered the perspective of a digitalized state. South Korea, Spain and Brazil brought experience confronting developed forms of the phenomenon. For Chile, the lesson is not merely to buy better tools. It is to build institutions capable of using them quickly, lawfully and across borders. Criminal networks thrive when agencies see disconnected pieces.

A Stronger State, a Harder Question

The Santiago meeting unfolded as Kast’s government pursued a broader response. Earlier in the week, it sent the Senate an urgent constitutional security reform containing eight changes under its Agenda Against Organized Crime and Terrorism. The proposal would create a new state of exception for grave or imminent threats to public security.

The president could impose it for up to 120 days and renew it once for the same period before needing further congressional approval. An affected zone would fall under an appointed general officer. During the emergency, the executive could restrict personal liberty, movement, assembly, and association, search communications, and requisition property.

The reform would also permit registries of criminal organizations and lasting penalties for people convicted of organized crime or terrorism. They could be permanently barred from public office and excluded for 15 years from substitute sentences and prison benefits. A president could designate a group as terrorist or criminal with a supporting institutional report and two-thirds Senate approval in secret session.

Here Chile reaches the difficult center of its security debate. Financial investigation demands precision: a device, an account, an owner, a warrant, a partner abroad. Emergency power is expansive. It governs territories, movement, communication, and public life. Both approaches may share an agenda, but they do not solve the same problem.

Chile has renewed emergency measures in parts of Araucanía and Biobío since 2022. Extending exceptional authority into organized crime policy therefore raises a question with historical weight. How can the state become fast enough to confront transnational networks without allowing extraordinary restrictions to feel ordinary?

The answer is not a choice between technology and force. Chile needs investigators who can follow money beyond a screen, prosecutors who can act across jurisdictions, judges who can authorize and review intrusive measures, and lawmakers who define limits clearly. The strongest state is not simply one that seizes phones or deploys soldiers. It can strike criminal wealth without surrendering the democratic rules separating public authority from the organizations it pursues.

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