A former official of DIAN – Colombia’s taxes and customs administration – and six others were captured in an ongoing investigation that is being conducted by a Prosecutor assigned to the National Unit of Money Laundering and Assets in operations carried out in Cali city with the support of the Dijin-national police.
According to the investigation which has included a selective search in databases, wiretappings, information analysis and inspections, it was detected the existence of a criminal organization headed by the former official, who is an accountant and he constituted shell companies with similar social object and risible capital. In order to register the companies, forged signatures and stamps from several notaries were used.
These entities were temporarily used to carry out import procedures from 2010 to the present. In total, 15 companies have been created through which customs declarations were made for an approximately amount of 15 billion pesos. Front of this figure there was no foreign currency channeling into the financial system or established channels for this purpose.
In proceedings were identified 11 people who would have responsibility, seven of them would have committed crimes of money-laundering, illicit enrichment in favor of third parties, procedural fraud and ideological falseness in documents.
The remaining accused persons would be responsible for the offenses of conspiracy to commit crimes and ideological falseness in documents. The facts, matters of investigation, are mainly developed in Cali city, where five of the registered companies use the same fiscal domicile and whose infrastructure does not belong to the amount of the declared operations.