Chile's Ministry of Finance reported that the bill creating an Economic Intelligence System to help trace illicit financial flows linked to organized crime has cleared the Chamber of Deputies’ Citizen Security Committee, although provisions expanding the Financial Analysis Unit’s (UAF) ability to obtain information protected by bank secrecy in administrative proceedings were rejected. The proposal now moves to the Chamber’s Finance Committee under an “immediate discussion” fast-track procedure. As amended in committee, the initiative shifts from a “subsystem” concept to an integrated Economic Intelligence System comprising the UAF and new intelligence units in the Internal Revenue Service (SII) and National Customs Service (SNA), structured as an independent management model separate from the State Intelligence System. The framework distinguishes autonomous work from work “on request”, including a mechanism for the National Prosecutor to request the System’s support in complex ongoing investigations; tightens rules on internal information handling and sharing, including explicit exclusions such as suspicious operation reports (ROS), intelligence reports sent to prosecutors, and information gathered via bank-secrecy lifting; and strengthens governance through a Coordination, Prevention and Security Committee chaired by the UAF director, with counterintelligence measures and stricter staff secrecy obligations, including a requirement for staff to provide access to their own bank information for counterintelligence purposes. The package also expands the UAF mandate from anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing to cover criminal associations, recalibrates and increases fines for obliged entities that fail to report properly, and adds measures targeting illegal gambling, including a legal definition and presumption for gambling machines, enhanced technical classification powers for the Superintendence of Casinos and Games, and import restrictions backed by smuggling and related customs offences. Further changes include creating a “revealing agent” tool at the Financial Market Commission (CMF), allowing an authorised official to act as a financial customer for compliance checks with reports usable as sanctioning evidence while keeping the official’s identity confidential. The bill proceeds next to the Finance Committee, then the Chamber floor, before returning to the Senate for a third reading. The ministry signalled it will continue to press its position on expanding how the UAF can seek bank-secrecy lifting for multiple persons linked to the same ROS in the remaining stages of the legislative process.

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