These operations formed an early template for how the Bang group would come to operate in Chile. Such operations habitually took the shape of running licensed casinos or entertainment venues and beauty parlors as fronts for drug trafficking and prostitution. Historically, this diaspora has allowed Fujianese organized crime to set up operations in different countries, either running these internally, or collaborating with other Chinese Triads, the Japanese Yakuza, or mafia groups in the United States.
Due to its geographic position and trade links, waves of Fujianese immigrants have migrated around the world, with a heavy presence in Hong Kong, southeast Asia, the United States, and Canada. The Bang group is one of the more prominent criminal outfits to emerge from the southeastern province of Fujian.
International Legacy of Fujianese Organized Crime InSight Crime lays out here why this country has been the ideal landing point for the Chinese mafia. While Chinese organized crime has made inroads into Latin America before, supplying fentanyl or chemical precursors to Mexican groups or helping to launder drug proceeds, this presence in Chile appears to be far more permanent. “There have been at least four investigations in recent years linked to migrant smuggling and human trafficking …in which we can see the same management structure,” Luis Toledo, the head of the national anti-drug unit at Chile’s Attorney General’s Office until January 2023, told InSight Crime.
Once arriving in Chilean cities such as Santiago, Valparaiso, and Temuco, the migrants would often be forced into sex exploitation at entertainment venues or to work as growers in indoor marijuana plantations.Ī parallel criminal investigation, which began in 2020, found that a string of these indoor marijuana plantations and entertainment venues were owned by families originating from the southern Chinese province of Fujian, known as the Bang clan. The complaint, filed by the Trade Association of Chinese Culture and Commerce in Chile (Asociación Gremial de Cultura y Comercio China en Chile), alleged that the migrants made their way to Argentina, Brazil, or Bolivia, and were then brought into Chile, paying between $2,500 and $8,000 each. In late August, a criminal complaint in Santiago stated that over 200 Chinese migrants had been illegally brought to Chile from the Chinese mainland since 2021.
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A series of police operations have revealed how a Chinese criminal gang has made strong inroads into Chile, benefiting from the country’s flourishing marijuana trade and close trade ties to China.
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