Pinochet's son was not under the rifle company's owner and no reason could be found for the payment.
On 19 December 1990, General Pinochet, still commander-in-chief of the army, stormed into the army headquarters and placed the 57,000 member force in alert, in what the general called a "ejercicio de enlace" (Spanish for Link exercise) and asked for an end to the investigation.
[1][2] The Chilean justice system continued to investigate the payment, but in 1994 as the Chilean Supreme court had to make a decision, the President of Chile Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle asked them to stop the case for reasons of state.
Judge Manuel Valderrama investigated whether the three purchase checks for Valmoval wound up in Pinochet's secret accounts, but in 2010 the suit was discontinued without results.
[4] The armed forces' ejercicio de enlace-standoff was the worst crisis of the (then) 3-year-old coalition government of President Patricio Aylwin.