The former head of the Criminal Litigation office of the Internal Revenue Service (SII), Marisa Navarretecommented on Wednesday about the public security crisis that the country is facing and how drug trafficking can be fought through investigations into the route of their money.
The criminal lawyer wonders in the program “To Bread Bread” with mira schindler of The Radio Counter: “Is the SII acting correctly with its attribution?” This is because “the SII seeks to monitor that people comply with their tax obligations. However, there is an attribution to complain about tax crimes and that is where it has to be”.
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“The tax offense is an inhibitor of subsequent conduct,” he said.
“Pressing a button reveals the drug’s assets”
When deepening her criticism, the former prosecutor explained that “drug traffickers make a profit, since drug trafficking as well as people are businesses, these businesses yield income that ‘theoretically’ must pay taxes. Even illicit income is taxable.”
Likewise, he emphasized that the Internal Revenue Service has the ability to see all personal income and purchases; therefore, “a button is pressed and the assets that a person has are known, which are important elements when we talk about organizations dedicated to drug trafficking.”
At this point lies the criticism made by the criminal lawyer to the tax agency, when specifying that the ‘modes operandi’ is incorrect. “The problem is that the SII only sees its sphere. It does not check all the people, only some. When they see certain irregularities, they call the person asking for justifications and does nothing else,” she said.
“Institutions have to be efficient”
Marisa Navarrete’s criticism goes beyond the SII and also includes the Public Ministry (MP) in this “passivity” in the investigations into the route of drug money. She regretted that the Financial Crimes Unit (UAF) – an auxiliary body to the MP – does not have the capacity to efficiently analyze irregularities in the acquisitions of different people, this because it is “a small body.”
For her, the solution is to change the way the Specialized Unit for Money Laundering, Economic Crime and Organized Crime (ULDDECO) works, since it is the one that receives the reports from the UAF and makes the decision whether or not to investigate a possible economic irregularity.
However, he further deepened the problem and clarified that one of the great setbacks that the Public Ministry has is the null incentive that prosecutors have to investigate cases that require time. “Prosecutors have an incentive to reduce the processing times of a case, to obtain a conviction, but they do not have an incentive to investigate, so they will not make efforts to see beyond the immediacy.”
This point, according to the former prosecutor, causes the Public Ministry to focus its investigation on minor crimes and not on investigating the trafficking gangs more thoroughly with the help of the SII and its units against this type of crime. “It seems unusual to me to waste time to investigate the theft of a cheese in a supermarket that, in investigating other cases, there is no goal for prosecutors to investigate.”
To this, he added the null intention of the SII to denounce crimes that are detected in the investigations corresponding to tax crimes. “Institutions have to be efficient,” he said.
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