This case includes tax fraud and violations of political campaign laws. Different persons, either politicians or their advisers or even family members, created fake invoices which SQM then paid. It is alleged that those who created these fake invoices then passed those funds onto political parties in violation of campaign finance laws. So they were acting on behalf of the politicians, without the politicians being involved directly. As to whether those funds bought any favors from the politicians for SQM, so far that has only been demonstrated in the case of Pablo Wagner, who was a former mining minister. New charges (August 2015) brought against certain defendants now include steering contracts.
