Top brokerage house will be indicted for money laundering in Chile

A case that in principle only involved a medical society defrauded by its lawyer, today is having serious consequences for one of the main stock brokers in Chile: on December 26 at 12:00 p.m., in Building A, Floor 2 , room 203 of the Public Ministry, LarrainVial Corredora de Bolsa will be formalized for money laundering.

During the hearing, Luis Francisco Skinner, LarrainVial’s Corporate Risk Manager, Asesoría e Inversiones Santa Bárbara Limitada, and Juan Aladino Cárcamo Gajardo, compliance analyst for the brokerage, will also be formalized.

It all began with a complaint filed at the end of April by the Sierra Bella SA Medical and Maternity Society, in which it accuses the broker of inexcusable negligence and criminal liability of a legal entity, for not having set off alerts in a case that, as he maintains, it seemed clearly suspicious and to have failed to inform the Financial Analysis Unit (UAF).

In the criminal action, the broker is accused of “laundering” more than 1,700 million Chilean pesos (around 1.9 million dollars), which were deposited in an investment account in 2018. The money came from a vale vista (something similar to a cashier’s check) that the Sierra Bella medical society had delivered in 2018 to the lawyer Isaías Gómez for the payment of the last installment of the purchase of a clinic that said society had bought from the Unión Evangelista Corporation. The problem is that Gómez never made the payment. Instead, he contacted an accomplice, José Miguel Patuelli, and together they devised a way to launder the money. For that, according to the complaint, they approached Patricio Vial Videla, who worked at the brokerage company Asesorías e Inversiones Santa Bárbara, which works with LarrainVial, and asked him to open an account with the brokerage.

According to the complaint, Patuelli would have falsified the document in which Sierra Bella empowered him to manage the payment of the debt of that last installment. Other versions say that the document was blank and that he would only have endorsed it in his name. These efforts allowed him to open a money market account in his name at LarrainVial and deposit the vale vista there. Money market is called those that have immediate liquidity.

According to the complaint, in a few days, he would have withdrawn the money through 26 checks to different banks.

found versions

According to sources in the case, Sierra Bella would not have found out about the robbery committed by her lawyer until six months later, which was when she decided to sue him.

For this reason, Isaías Gómez has already been formalized and will be reformed, also on December 26.

Those familiar with the case indicate that the lawyer had gambling debts and that a significant part of the money defrauded would have been used to settle this situation.

Sources linked to LarrainVial say that the formalization hearing was taken by surprise, since there were still pending proceedings in the case.

The broker’s defense, led by lawyer Juan Domingo Acosta, had already submitted a request for dismissal for this cause and according to sources in the case, it will be the way forward after formalization.