Chinese buyers were the end destination of a five-year smuggling pipeline that drained an estimated US$917 million worth of stolen copper from Chile, authorities said on Wednesday after police dismantled the network in one of the largest organised crime operations ever uncovered in the country.
The group trucked stolen metal to Iquique, a port city in Chile’s far north, and shipped it to China in containers disguised as scrap cargo. Over the same period, it collected more than US$55 million in…