Time for a new scandal - sick leave abuse

Chile Headlines & Hot Topics
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The abuse of sick leave is nothing new, but in recent years this has reached epic proportions and the emission of fraudulent medical certificates had become a national industry.

Dorothy Pérez, the head of the Contraloria, Chiles government auditing service, recently started an investigation that, by cross-checking, discovered 25,000 cases of government employees who had traveled outside the country during their “illnesses”.

The usual media mouthpieces have voiced their shocked responses to this latest scandal, and no doubt some heads will roll.
But this is only the tip of the iceberg as it only covers abuse by public servants traveling out of Chile.
Some public institutions are resisting this investigation, while the commie-dominated Colegio Medico has remained strangely silent.

This use of available statistics to compile cross checks seems new in Chile, but could be usefully expanded to cover for example, the emission of boletas de honorarios while supposedly on sick leave.

There seems no limit to what people will do to defraud the system, given the laxity of the current administration, so its about time some controls were put in place. Its ironic that the offenders come from the well-paid and notoriously inefficient public sector.

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And EMOL has dug up a public-sector skeleton from 2020:

In 2020, in the midst of the pandemic, the Internal Revenue Service (SII) revealed that 37,100 fiscal employees had collected the middle-class bonus (CLP$500,000) without meeting the eligibility requirements. As is the case today, the reactions five years ago focused on the announcement of administrative proceedings and the opening of a criminal investigation by the prosecutor’s office. However, the outcome of those proceedings has not yet been made public.

Those overpaid “public servants” didn’t miss a days pay during the pandemic, but I bet that no attempts have been made to recover the cash mistakenly handed out to those undeserving sinvergüenzas.

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Ever since the end of the scamdemic and the resumption of my multiple per year trips back to the States, I’ve been baffled by how every LATAM flight to LAX goes out full. Given the supposed cramp on finances on more or less honest workers in the private sector since 18O, the Scamdemic and gross commie mismanagement/robbery, I was left scratching my head as CHILEAN families with babies to kids below formal schooling age made up the overwhelming majority on outgoing flights and half or more on the return flights at times of the year way out of Chilean summer vacation schedule.

Now I have a pretty good idea of what I was seeing, overpaid public employees on medical leave on their trips to the extranjero.

Need to check out if is possible to quickly short:

Viajes Falabella
Despegar
Booking
LATAM
Sky
Jetsmart
Etc.
:angry:

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Another observation, ever since the end of the Scamdemic, the Alameda bus station is more crowded than before on Fridays and the beginning and ending of long weekend holidays. I will have to assume theses are the other public sector non-extranjero traveling Chileans on paid vacation taking the family to the coast and other parts every weekend as much as possible.

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Looking at what the DOGE is attempting to do in the US to at least in principle rein in the massive levels of public employee fraud… maybe something similar ought to be implemented in Chilito. Along with refurbished guillotines for the offenders.

Nah… this country lives for fraud, waste, and abuse.

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My husband has a government job, so he has seen the abuses of medical leave for many years. It’s bad. One example, a former manager of his spent probably six months on some sort of leave per year. I don’t know if she traveled abroad. When they were remote during the pandemic, she was always calling him from Jumbo or her mother’s apartment. This year, she was finally let go, but with a nice severance. He says at least he can be exempt from any scrutiny since he hasn’t had a licencia since 2018.

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In a curious inversion of the ancient proverb “Physician, heal thyself”, all the staff at this public clinic granted themselves sick leave:

According to the comptroller’s office, the investigation arose “after discovering that the only Cesfam (Center for Medical Assistance) in the commune is lacking medical care, given that the seven staff members who work at the health center are on medical leave.”

Furthermore, the complaints allege that the same physicians granted medical leave to each other, “generating a progressive absence at the health center.”

You couldn’t make this stuff up.

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Reminds us of the Chilean surgeons watching a football match during surgery on an anesthetized patient. One of oh so many reminders concerning the nature of the medical industry in the country.

And of course we would expect such abuse from the Boric family. Story "Scandal in Chile: Gabriel Boric’s sister-in-law resigns after traveling abroad on medical leave." Other news reports that Boric government attempted to conceal evidence of the resignation and reason.

Meanwhile, in the excessively funded “eco-feminism” ministry: Ecofeminism mining ministry worker resigns: on ‘medical leave’ for almost 10 months

Chilean school teacher takes paid medical leave to go skiing in Europe. Read all about it…

More than 1000 public workers removed from their posts as a result of these investigations. Reportedly another 6000 under investigation.

Chile is indeed the poster child for shameless viveza criolla.

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Bump.

We probably won’t see the end of the reporting on this abuse for a while, which is a good thing: reporting on a bad thing. Chile is actually confronting or at least acknowledging the massive levels of corruption, fraud, and abuse that for so long so many have wanted to pretend didn’t exist – including the risible notion that the Pacos were somehow squeaky clean. Will it mean any sort of real change in the profoundly dishonest nature of the prevailing culture of the country? Nah. Just periodic mention that it’s still there.

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Further investigations into the “sick leave abuse” scandal. Film at 11.

In the vernacular:

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Edit : An earlier English language report

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Text from that:

It began with a data match. It became a test of credibility.

In the lead-up to Chile’s presidential elections, the Comptroller General uncovered that over 25,000 public employees had travelled abroad while officially on medical leave. Nearly 36,000 sick notes were linked to international departures, costing the state an estimated $350 million. But as serious as the financial loss may be, what collapsed first was the narrative.

  • A reputational crisis poorly handled becomes a crisis of legitimacy*

This is not just a story of fraud. It is a textbook case of what happens when public institutions mismanage a reputational threat of national scale. Because in crisis communication, the real damage begins the moment the audience sees no leadership.

Metro de Santiago, the Chilean capital’s subway system, saw its HR chief, Patricio Baronti, travelled abroad while on leave and claimed ignorance of the rules before resigning. Eduardo Espinoza, the Republican mayor of Macul, crossed into Peru citing medical treatment for acute stress. Other cases involved workers from ministries, public services, and educational bodies using leave periods to study, campaign, run businesses, or travel recreationally.

In these moments, individual stories stop being effective. They fracture the message. And when the system is under fire, a fractured message reads as systemic weakness.

Chile’s political establishment missed the only playbook that works in institutional crisis: coordinated, credible, cross-party messaging.

None of that happened. There was no press conference. No unified language. No coordinated commitment to clean up the practice, defend institutional integrity, and reinforce trust in the electoral process. Each response came in isolation. Some defensive. Others vague. Most late.

### In the private sector, this would be communications malpractice

If a multinational corporation faced a leak of this scale, spanning hundreds of departments and exposing structural abuse, the response would be immediate: message alignment, legal coordination, reputational triage.

Yet when it comes to the state—which sells trust, not products—the need for message discipline is even greater.

  • The lesson? Silence isn’t neutrality. It’s surrender.*

There is more to this earlier story, if you can access Linkedin

And the scandals just keep on coming.

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When and how is all this going to end? Corruption, violence, foreign drug gangs, endemic larceny, disregard for the law, malfunctioning institutions etc etc etc. No way to run a country.

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And STILL 30% of Chileans will vote for a continuation of this shit or worse in their brain damaged or drug addled view that this time communism will work and this 30% of brilliant Chileans will insure its one and only success in its 177 years.

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This sort of moral corruption is not just what the addled 30 percent are voting for. It’s endemic in the culture. It is the heart and descending large intestine of what it means to be chilenito. A change of conventional political government will not erase or even impact this sort of ever-present perversity and characteristically Latin American lack of honor.

“La viveza del chileno”. (2015)

Esta es una frase con la cual nuestro país suele explicar un curioso doble estándar respecto de nuestra identidad nacional: la admiración que despiertan nuestras acciones cuestionables e incluso deshonestas rayando en el delito… siempre y cuando nos proporcionen un beneficio personal o, al menos, un perjuicio a quienes tienen más recursos que nosotros.

(This is a phrase [often used in Chile] to explain a curious double standard regarding our national identity: the admiration aroused by our questionable and even dishonest actions bordering on crime… as long as they provide us with personal benefit or, at least, harm those who have more resources than us.)

Take the time to read and understand the rest of that article. No attempt to understand Chile — or to protect yourself from the Chileans – can be successful until the nature of viveza criolla a lo chileno can be grasped.

https://www.biobiochile.cl/noticias/2015/08/02/la-viveza-del-chileno.shtml

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Bump.

281 foreign medical doctors kicked out of Chile over fraudulent leave practices.

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Chile’s National Immigration Service is working with the country’s Social Security (Suceso) for information on foreign medical professionals who have been sanctioned for fraudulently issuing medical leave permission where no medical grounds existed.

It turns out that this sort of corruption is not just a Chilean cultural practice, but rather one enjoyed as a Latin American custom.

Gosh! Who could have imagined that?

The medical agency identified 281 foreign “professionals” being penalized for the fraudulent leave permits, including those doctors hit with fines or suspension from practice.

Report: more than 50% of those were … wait for it…Colombian nationals.

The national Immigration Service verified the immigration status of each of the foreigners involved and set into motion revocation of their permission for residency in the country, along with orders to leave Chile.

The prosecutor’s office has reported a current count of 71,653 cases of fraudulent leave documents. The economic impact was indicated as 26 billion pesos (CLP) in public monies and 1.6 billion in losses to private health companies.