Corruption in Chile
Institutional corruption in the country
In Transparency International's 2025 Corruption Perceptions Index, Chile was ranked number 31 among the 182 countries in the Index, where the country ranked number 1 is perceived to have the most honest public sector. It was ranked seventh among the countries of the Americas, behind Canada, Uruguay, Barbados, the United States, the Bahamas and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.
In that index, Chile was given a score of 63 on a scale from 0 ("highly corrupt") to 100 ("very clean"). For comparison with regional scores, the best score among the countries of the Americas was 75, the average score was 42 and the worst score was 10. For comparison with worldwide scores, the best score was 89 (ranked 1), the average score was 42, and the worst score was 9 (ranked 181, in a two-way tie).
According to a 2021 study, the regions of Ñuble, Los Lagos and Aysén are the most susceptible suffering nepotism and elite capture.
Corruption in Chile
In December 2005, the mayor of Quillota, Luis Mella (Christian Democrat), alleged the government's Job-Making Program (PGE) paid political allies for work that was not performed. The Public Ministry and the comptroller then initiated parallel investigations into the potential illicit use of public funds. Although earmarked for employment programs, these resources were possibly diverted to the political campaigns of Socialist Party and Party for Democracy candidates in the Fifth Region during the 2005 congressional elections. The PGE investigations revealed that individuals paid to do public works actually spent their time campaigning for political parties.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Corruption in Chile” is institutional corruption in the country. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Corruption, Chile and Institutional, not as a finished interpretation.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 3, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5173070. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2025, 2021 and 2005.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Corruption in Chile” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.