Blog dedicated to reporting on Mexican drug cartels
on the border line between the US and Mexico
.

Sunday, April 19, 2020

Gold; the Ferrari of money laundering

Chivis Martinez Borderland Beat TY follower Via email Gangsterism Out


NTR Metals is the largest money-laundering prosecution involving precious metals in U.S. history. “The scope of the conspiracy is enormous,” prosecutors told a judge during a hearing in Miami in 2017. Federal prosecutors charged 3 NTR traders with money laundering, saying the three men bought $3.6 billion of illegal gold from criminal groups in Latin America.

The scandal shut down NTR and cost its Dallas-based parent company, Elemetal, the ability to trade gold on bullion and commodity exchanges.

In 2012, the company did little business in Latin America. But the next year, NTR struck a rich vein, becoming the largest U.S. importer of Peruvian gold with $980m worth of deals. They did it with help from Peruvian businessman Pedro Pérez Miranda, who is suspected of laundering massive amounts of drug money through the gold trade.


 Over the past two decades, as the U.S. war on drugs undercut the cash flow of narco-traffickers, dealers diversified into Latin America’s gold industry. By using drug profits to mine and sell gold, criminals can launder staggering amounts of money.

NTR’s Peruvian operations collapsed at the end of 2013 when police raided a storage facility outside Lima holding gold that belonged to Ferrari and others. Agents seized $18.8m worth of gold. But the party wasn’t over — it moved. In 2014, NTR was smuggling gold across the border to Ecuador and Bolivia.

When local governments in those countries also began cracking down the party moved again, this time to Colombia. In 2015, NTR’s imports from Colombia soared to $722m. That accounted for more than half of the country’s gold exports to the US. Colombia exported 64 tons of gold in 2016, much of it to the United States. That same year, Colombia’s large-scale, legal mining operations produced only eight tons.

A large part of the gap between what Colombia’s big mines produce and what the country exports is unlicensed and untaxed gold — often unearthed at any cost by operations controlled by narcos.

Cartel associates pose as traders to buy and mine gold. Cocaine profits are seed money. They sell the metal through front companies to refineries. Once the deal is made, the cartels have turned their dirty gold into clean cash. To the outside world, they’re not drug dealers; they’re gold traders.

9 comments:

  1. Not just limited to gold, but all commodities, oil, minerals, gems, and services- money laundering knows no limits, just the imagination.

    ReplyDelete
  2. When it said "Struck a rich vein"
    my first thought was Planted gold
    where someone puts gold in to make it seem like a real strike Like they have done in past many times
    amazing that gold is so valueable
    when you cant eat it it wont help with cure a virus or stop radiation from killing you Really what is it really good for ? Tecnology stuff ya .


    I worked at a gold mine in Nevada
    the deadly chemicals used. Was actually changing womans monthly periods
    along with other ills
    Raping the earth killing humans and slavery and the pollution
    Would rather have a beautiful Taxco
    Silver handmade braclett or earings with shells then a gold



    ReplyDelete
  3. If 3 guys from Miami were capable of laundering 3 billion dollars, you can imagine how large the market is for cleaning money.

    Keep fighting that “war on drugs”...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. 10:36 tell the chinese, they got the US by the Ying-Yangs with their friendship, but what worked was their cheap or free captive communist slave labor, they got to receive almost all of the best US manufacturing offshored by "sagacious US entrepreneurs" who acquired all of it with drug trafficking proceeds. Since the start of the Vietnam war they were trafficking heroin to the US, after the war cocaine to the US, and grifa and back to chinese meth precursors outsourced by european pharmaceuticals who invented uppers and downers, like Klaus Barbie's employer, BAYER.
      Thanks to them, some american addicts boggers have become so expensive because they are so full of cocaine.

      Delete
  4. Damn can a brotha get a thick ass gold chain for the low ?

    ReplyDelete
  5. Thats where the smart money is...

    ReplyDelete
  6. Once the Americans find out what your doing they dont F around. Theyll shut your business down and seize any assets you had. Then prosecute you and give you 20+ years. The morales brothers learned this the hard way when they had their ranch in oklahoma seized and everything sold off and then received a 20 year sentence.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Everybody back to stealing avocado groves
    and panties drying from ropes on the sun.
    But I am sure the dirtiest trick of all is enticing the gold buyers to hoard their bullion on american corporations until confiscation day.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. La pinche Neta cabrones, como dijo el Chavo del Ocho:
      "Todo esta friamente calculado..."
      all the chips always fall on the US hands, make sure your nalgas don't

      Delete

Comments are moderated, refer to policy for more information.
Envía fotos, vídeos, notas, enlaces o información
Todo 100% Anónimo;

borderlandbeat@gmail.com