Colombia’s prosecution arrested 15 members of the National Army who are accused of registering and recovering the payments of ghost soldiers.
Another eight former employees of the army’s human resources department were also arrested, local media reported.
The military corruption network illegally received approximately $1.5 million in payments from the army over the past year, a source close to the investigation told newspaper El Tiempo.
These payments were made to fictional soldiers “that appeared in the army’s system as if they were doing military service.”
The ghost soldiers had been created by human resources personnel that collected their wages and expense payments.
According to El Tiempo, the army’s counterintelligence unit discovered the racket when a civilian was refused medical attention because he was registered with the military’s medical insurance.
The internal investigation that followed reportedly revealed ghost soldiers in jungle battalions in the Amazon region.
How many ghost soldiers had allegedly been created by Human Resources was not immediately revealed.
The prosecution, which took over the counterintelligence operation, is expected to seek court approval for the detention of the suspects, including two colonels, on Thursday.
The ghost soldier scandal is the latest of a series of corruption scandals that have hit Colombia’s security forces in the past years.