KPMG probes irregular promotions at Codelco’s Chuquicamata mine

KPMG has opened a probe into alleged irregular promotions at Codelco’s Chuquicamata division, a case that goes beyond one personnel dispute and into how a major mining workplace decides who advances, who gets paid and who gets protected. The complaint arrived in January 2026, and the mine is already under pressure from a wider fight over controls inside Chile’s state-owned copper giant.

That wider fight sharpened on May 20, when Codelco said an internal audit found deviations in the application of internal standards tied to 20,000 metric tons of copper content from Chuquicamata and 6,875 tmf from Ministro Hales. The disputed total, 26,875 tmf, was about 2% of Codelco’s reported 2025 production. The company said the complaint entered through its institutional channel on March 3, 2026, and that the material should have remained on the books as work-in-process rather than finished product. Codelco also said its audited 2025 financial statements did not need to be modified.

The production case has already produced consequences for managers. Codelco said it would dismiss one executive, sanction others involved and file a complaint with the Public Prosecutor’s Office. The dismissed executive was César Márquez Márquez, the manager of Budget and Management Control, and seven other executives were also sanctioned. The disputed figures were tied to December 2025 production reporting and, by one estimate, affected US$14.3 million in bonuses paid to more than 6,000 workers and employees across Chuquicamata, Ministro Hales and Codelco’s headquarters. Those bonuses are expected to be clawed back.

That is the backdrop for the new KPMG review. The promotions complaint reaches into the same basic question the production audit raised: whether formal rules were followed, or whether managers bent them in ways that affected pay, status and accountability. Executives involved in the production controversy said an internal rule allowed the copper to be counted. The audit’s preliminary view was that they exceeded their authority and had not secured the downstream processing needed to justify the accounting treatment.

Chuquicamata has become a repeat test for outside oversight. In March 2024, KPMG investigated allegations of surveillance and harassment against union leaders at the division, and that inquiry led to the dismissal of Chuquicamata’s industrial security director, Carlos Águila Villanueva. Now the firm is back inside the same operation as Chilean lawmakers and the Comptroller General press for answers on production anomalies, incentives and management evaluations. For Codelco, the issue is not just copper tonnage. It is whether workers can trust the rules that govern promotion, pay and discipline at one of the company’s most politically sensitive mines.