Chile’s Undersecretary of the Interior, Manuel Monsalve, has ruled out the presence of members of the Salvadoran Salvatrucha gang in the country, thus denying the claims of the Central American country’s vice-president, Felix Ulloa.
Vice President Ulloa claimed that, as part of El Salvador’s state of emergency to crack down on gangs and crime, the Salvatrucha gang had migrated to northern Chile, according to television channel T13.
These claims were quickly denied by Monsalve, who accused Ulloa of speaking «without foundation» while assuring that the government «would have no problem recognizing that there is organized crime in Chile» if that were the case.
«For several weeks now they have been trying to establish the presence of this Salvadoran criminal organization in Chile. If it were present, we would have no problem in recognizing it, because the government has the obligation to make the information transparent to the country,» he said.
Monsalve stressed that, in the face of the rumors, he had consulted with the relevant police authorities to check whether they had indications of the presence of gang members. «No police intelligence agency has any information,» he said.
«There is no serious precedent, I think it is not good to waste time in a debate that has no basis and in information that has no veracity either,» Monsalve stressed, who nevertheless acknowledged that the situation in terms of organized crime is «changing», not ruling out that in the future there may be evidence of the presence of gang members in Chile.
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
