Italian drug trafficker and murderous neo-Nazi among beneficiaries of decrees by Rabat and Silva in Kast government
Justice Ministry decrees reduced sentences for an Italian drug trafficker linked to the mafia and a member of the neo-Nazi group Batallón 38 convicted of murder.
Sentence reductions for Italian drug trafficker and neo-Nazi: the other beneficiaries of Rabat and Silva
Decrees signed during the José Antonio Kast government reduced the sentences of an Italian drug trafficker linked to the mafia, a member of the neo-Nazi group Batallón 38 convicted of murder, and a man sentenced for attempted femicide, according to biobiochile.cl following access to more than a thousand Justice Ministry resolutions. The sentence reductions amounted to 9 months and 16 days, 21 months and 97 days, and one month and 6 days, respectively.
The beneficiaries are Massimiliano Beltrami, convicted of drug trafficking, and Patricio Salas Villar, nicknamed "el Pato Cleto", sentenced for the murder of Isaac Araya Herrera. To them is added a man who attacked a neighbour with an axe. "He took a chunk out of my skull," recounted the victim herself, who also suffered amputation of the fingers of one hand.
The Italian drug trafficker from Operation Tirreno
Massimiliano Beltrami was arrested in 2018 almost by chance. He and four other Italian citizens travelled from Italy to Chile at the end of February that year with four jet skis, claiming to participate in a water sports tournament. The plan was to transport the jet skis to a location near Lima, load them with cocaine, and bring them back into Chile to subsequently dispatch them to Rome by sea.
The operation did not go as planned. A Chilean Customs inspector began to suspect when he noticed that the Italians did not arrive with a tan, despite supposedly coming from a beach event in the middle of summer. The vans were driven to the inspection pit, where inspectors detected that the rivets on the jet skis were not original. Upon drilling into one of them, white powder came out: cocaine. In total, the two jet skis were carrying 103 kilograms of cocaine hydrochloride with 57% purity, valued at more than 4.5 billion pesos at the time of seizure.
Beltrami did not personally transport the jet skis, but carabineros arrested him at the same border complex "in circumstances in which he was watching over the loading of the drugs". Documents found in his vehicle later confirmed his involvement with drug trafficking. During the court proceedings, the Italian was identified as part of the Italian mafia.
Operation Tirreno, as the case became known, ended with Beltrami sentenced to 9 years in prison in Chile. The decree that granted him the reduction of 9 months and 16 days was signed on 15 May 2026 by the Justice Minister, Fernando Rabat. The document argued that the ministry "was not authorised to deny the benefit of sentence reduction based on the seriousness of the offence and the protected legal interest", citing "uniform jurisprudence" from the Supreme Court that obliged it to issue the corresponding decree.
At the time of publication, biobiochile.cl was unable to confirm Beltrami's current situation. In theory, he was to be extradited to Italy once his sentence in Chile was completed. With the reduction applied, that sentence was to end on 16 May 2026.
The murderer from Batallón 38
Patricio Salas Villar was sentenced in 2017 to 13 years in prison for the murder of Isaac Andrés Araya Herrera. The events occurred on 22 October 2014, at around 21:30 hours, when the neo-Nazi group Batallón 38, of which Salas Villar was a member, ambushed the victim and his companions with sticks, a baseball bat and bladed weapons. The group sealed both ends of the street to prevent escape while hurling threats. "You threw punks, bastards," they shouted at the moment of the attack, according to what was recorded in the proceedings.
The Public Prosecutor's Office stated during the trial that Araya Herrera died as a result of hypovolaemic shock caused by penetrating sharp wound injuries to the abdomen, according to the autopsy report.
The decree that reduced Salas Villar's sentence by 21 months and 97 days was signed by the Under-Secretary of Justice, Luis Silva.
Official discourse under scrutiny
Fernando Rabat defended before Congress the legality of the benefits granted, arguing that the Justice Ministry had to comply with Supreme Court rulings. Although the reductions were issued in accordance with current regulations, biobiochile.cl's investigation opens a contradiction with the discourse of order and strong-handed governance with which José Antonio Kast came to La Moneda.
The three cases—the Italian drug trafficker, the neo-Nazi convicted of murder and the perpetrator of attempted femicide—form part of a universe of more than a thousand decrees reviewed by the media, signed by senior Justice officials during the first seven months of the current government.
Source: Google News CL — Crime