Chile fines Chinese mafia inmate after cocaine found at maximum-security prison

A Chilean court on Monday fined a Chinese man caught with cocaine inside a Santiago prison, where he is being held on charges of homicide, kidnapping and drug trafficking. It was the second such ruling in five involving a Chinese inmate in five months, with prosecutors linking the two men to the same criminal network. Officers had searched Haifeng Tang at Santiago Uno prison on August 12, a day before his move to La Laguna, the maximum-security jail at the centre of President Jose Antonio Kast’s tough prison policy. They found two sealed bags holding about a gram of powder, and a field test confirmed it was cocaine. The Seventh Guarantee Court of Santiago, which rules on pre-trial matters, set the fine at 71,649 pesos (US$75). Alternatively, the defendant can serve up to six months if he does not pay. Until last year, Chilean prosecutors had only identified one Chinese criminal network in the country; they are now running three separate investigations, from illegal casinos in the capital to a fraud operation in the far north. Tang also faces charges of weapons possession and criminal association, and prosecutors have identified the victim in the homicide count as another Chinese citizen. The discovery and subsequent penalty were a setback for Kast’s flagship security operation, since Tang had been cleared for transfer despite carrying cocaine. A judge in Iquique dealt a second blow later in August, ordering several Chinese defendants in a fraud case sent back from La Laguna to the prison where they had been held in the northern city, more than 1,700 km (1,056 miles) from the new complex. Kast launched Operation Cancerbero in August, fulfilling a campaign promise, modelled partly on the mass-incarceration approach of El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele. The first phase moved 191 inmates, among them nine leaders of organised crime groups, to a maximum-security prison opened last year with capacity for 2,320 people and holding roughly 400 beforehand. Prison officers had found cocaine on another Chinese inmate at the same prison in March, and the same court imposed the identical penalty. Longliang Wang is charged with criminal association and kidnapping for ransom. The charges stem from a separate investigation that prosecutors have also tied to a group they call Hongmen. That case involved a Chilean businessman who exported fruit to China and was seized over a commercial debt he owed to Chinese counterparts, one of the few points where the networks touch the bilateral trade that sustains Chile’s economy. Wang had already been convicted in 2017 of trying to leave Chile on a false passport, and a court replaced his sentence with expulsion, an order that was never enforced. Tang is named among the leadership core of the network dismantled last year, alongside Huan Tao and Xingwang Cai. He became publicly known in July last year after firing a submachine gun near a residential building in Meiggs, the Santiago district with the largest Chinese commercial presence in the country, and police detained him that month along with 10 other Chinese nationals. The cases involve a community that remains small in a country of about 18 million people. Chilean migration authorities estimate that more than 10,000 Chinese nationals live there, while the last census counted between 13,500 and 17,000 Chinese-born residents. Their commercial weight is concentrated in Meiggs, a wholesale district behind Santiago’s main railway station that holds about 3,000 trading licences, of which Chinese merchants hold more than 440. Police seized about US$600,000 in cash in an operation known as Muralla Oriental, and found the group moved money through hawala, an informal transfer system that leaves no banking trail. The sum is believed to be linked to multiple illegal casinos through the country. A police officer on active duty was accused of taking payments of 500,000 pesos (US$500) to alert the group to inspections in Meiggs. The national police director, Eduardo Cerna, described the group as an “immense, dangerous and complicated criminal structure of Chinese origin”. Prosecutors turned their attention to the same network in June with Muralla Oriental II, raiding 27 illegal casinos in Santiago and the Valparaiso region, detaining 37 people and confiscating close to US$700,000. That stage targets the laundering structure behind the group and the finances of prominent businessmen in Chile’s Chinese community. Chilean prosecutors call the network Hongmen, a name that carries older and contested meanings since it refers to the Tiandihui (or Heaven and Earth Society), an 18th century Chinese fraternal organisation whose overseas branches operated as mutual aid societies, even as criminal groups claimed the title for themselves. Prosecutors said the operation last year revealed Hongmen in Chile for the first time, as a network separate from the Bang de Fujian, the Fujianese group detected in the country in 2020. The defendants returned to the north belong to a third network, a family organisation known as the Clan Chen, which prosecutors in Tarapaca say channelled more than US$180 million from international fraud through Chilean banks using shell companies around the Iquique free-trade zone. That investigation began after the Federal Bureau of Investigation alerted Chilean authorities. Several defendants are still awaiting trial, including Ping Lin, another man linked by prosecutors to Hongmen who was moved to La Laguna alongside Tang. He faces charges of human trafficking for sexual exploitation, drug trafficking and weapons possession, and prosecutors are seeking more than 55 years in prison.

Chile fines Chinese mafia inmate after cocaine found at maximum-security prison

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Prosecutors link the inmate to a Chinese criminal network targeted in a major police operation last year and a second raid in June

Prosecutors link the inmate to a Chinese criminal network targeted in a major police operation last year and a second raid in June