The theft of salmon is one of three areas that the Chilean internal revenue service, SII, has begun to investigate in relation to complex crimes occurring in the country.
The tax service specifically created a unit to look into complex crimes and found three areas of pressing need for further investigation to be the supply of informal commerce, vehicle theft, and mafia activity affecting the salmon industry.
Regarding the latter issue, organized crime rings have increasingly been robbing from salmon-farming firms and selling the stolen goods to the local market. According to numbers provided by industry association SalmonChile, there have been 170 reports of salmon theft from cargo operators, farming centers, and processing plants from 2018 to June 2024.
“We have discovered, through the analysis of sales and purchase invoices, companies selling more salmon than they buy. How do salmon multiply in some companies? There is a part that is from the black market because they buy from those who steal salmon,” SII Director Javier Etcheberry told local publication Diario Financiero.
Etcheberry highlighted the need for increased state coordination to address security problems that the country is experiencing, including issues in the salmon industry.
“Sometimes, the state continues to operate as it did when there were no car thefts or organized crime. [However,] there are efficient organizations that offer prices that compete with each other,” he said. “If the main priority of Chileans is [dealing with] insecurity, why can’t we coordinate better to be able to solve these issues? This is not only a tax issue but a country issue. We have to have control … to know what is happening.”
Salmon theft costs the country as much as ...
