The arrest of bank employees with alleged ties to Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua criminal organization has reignited debate over Chile’s financial secrecy rules, which are among the most restrictive in the world, Bloomberg reported.

Prosecutors allege a Santander Chile employee, from the Chilean subsidiary of Spain’s Banco Santander SA, served as a central figure in an $85-million money-laundering operation that funneled funds through accounts at banks across nearly the entire Chilean financial sector. A second suspect worked at state-owned BancoEstado, the news agency said. 

The probe, known as Operation Tokyo, led to 17 people being formally charged Sunday with money-laundering and related crimes. Regional Prosecutor Héctor Barros told Bloomberg that Tren de Aragua actively recruits individuals with knowledge of the financial system, typically targeting them while they are already employed at financial institutions.

Santander Chile is not under investigation. The allegedly illicit activity was carried out through the employee’s personal accounts at multiple institutions, not through the bank itself, Barros told Bloomberg. The individual at BancoEstado was a contractor hired through an outside provider who worked there from January 2023 to June 2026, the bank said, adding it has blocked all system access and is conducting an internal audit.

The arrests have put pressure on new right-wing President José Antonio Kast to ease rules his conservative allies have defended as a safeguard against state overreach, according to the report. Chile’s financial secrecy law dates to 1986, enacted under Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship, and requires judicial authorization to access bank records. 

In a 2021 report, the OECD criticized Chile’s secrecy requirements as overly burdensome and called on the country to expand access to financial data in corruption and money-laundering investigations. 

National Prosecutor Ángel Valencia said allowing prosecutors to access bank records without judicial review would significantly simplify such investigations, arguing the process should be as routine as obtaining a public document, Bloomberg said.

The debate has also been shaped by earlier high-profile cases: investigations of financial conglomerate Grupo Penta and lithium producer SQM saw prosecutors argue that access to banking records was critical to tracing illicit funds, though courts ultimately granted access only after prolonged legal disputes. 

A bill introduced by former President Gabriel Boric’s government in 2023 sought to create an Economic Intelligence System and expand the powers of Chile’s Financial Analysis Unit, known as the UAF, allowing it to access certain bank records without prior judicial authorization in organized crime and money-laundering cases. But the legislation remains stalled more than three years later, the news agency said. 

The administration is now preparing a new proposal, which could come either as a standalone bill or an amendment to existing legislation, though any new plan is expected to keep judicial oversight intact, according to the report.