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Sunday, December 4, 2011

D.E.A. Launders Mexican Profits of Drug Cartels

Posted in the Borderland Beat forum by Texcoco

A crime scene in Monterrey, Mexico, last week. Drug-related violence has claimed the lives of more than 40,000 people since late 2006, Mexican officials say.

By GINGER THOMPSON/New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/04/world/americas/us-drug-agents-launder-profits-of-mexican-cartels.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha2

WASHINGTON — Undercover American narcotics agents have laundered or smuggled millions of dollars in drug proceeds as part of Washington’s expanding role in Mexico’s fight against drug cartels, according to current and former federal law enforcement officials.

The agents, primarily with the Drug Enforcement Administration, have handled shipments of hundreds of thousands of dollars in illegal cash across borders, those officials said, to identify how criminal organizations move their money, where they keep their assets and, most important, who their leaders are.

They said agents had deposited the drug proceeds in accounts designated by traffickers, or in shell accounts set up by agents.

The officials said that while the D.E.A. conducted such operations in other countries, it began doing so in Mexico only in the past few years. The high-risk activities raise delicate questions about the agency’s effectiveness in bringing down drug kingpins, underscore diplomatic concerns about Mexican sovereignty, and blur the line between surveillance and facilitating crime. As it launders drug money, the agency often allows cartels to continue their operations over months or even years before making seizures or arrests.

Agency officials declined to publicly discuss details of their work, citing concerns about compromising their investigations. But Michael S. Vigil, a former senior agency official who is currently working for a private contracting company called Mission Essential Personnel, said, “We tried to make sure there was always close supervision of these operations so that we were accomplishing our objectives, and agents weren’t laundering money for the sake of laundering money.”

Another former agency official, who asked not to be identified speaking publicly about delicate operations, said, “My rule was that if we are going to launder money, we better show results. Otherwise, the D.E.A. could wind up being the largest money launderer in the business, and that money results in violence and deaths.”

Those are precisely the kinds of concerns members of Congress have raised about a gun-smuggling operation known as Fast and Furious, in which agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives allowed people suspected of being low-level smugglers to buy and transport guns across the border in the hope that they would lead to higher-level operatives working for Mexican cartels. After the agency lost track of hundreds of weapons, some later turned up in Mexico; two were found on the United States side of the border where an American Border Patrol agent had been shot to death.

Former D.E.A. officials rejected comparisons between letting guns and money walk away. Money, they said, poses far less of a threat to public safety. And unlike guns, it can lead more directly to the top ranks of criminal organizations.

“These are not the people whose faces are known on the street,” said Robert Mazur, a former D.E.A. agent and the author of a book about his years as an undercover agent inside the Medellín cartel in Colombia. “They are super-insulated. And the only way to get to them is to follow their money.”

Another former drug agency official offered this explanation for the laundering operations: “Building up the evidence to connect the cash to drugs, and connect the first cash pickup to a cartel’s command and control, is a very time consuming process. These people aren’t running a drugstore in downtown L.A. that we can go and lock the doors and place a seizure sticker on the window. These are sophisticated, international operations that practice very tight security. And as far as the Mexican cartels go, they operate in a corrupt country, from cities that the cops can’t even go into.”

The laundering operations that the United States conducts elsewhere — about 50 so-called Attorney General Exempt Operations are under way around the world — had been forbidden in Mexico after American customs agents conducted a cross-border sting without notifying Mexican authorities in 1998, which was how most American undercover work was conducted there up to that point.

But that changed in recent years after President Felipe Calderón declared war against the country’s drug cartels and enlisted the United States to play a leading role in fighting them because of concerns that his security forces had little experience and long histories of corruption.

Today, in operations supervised by the Justice Department and orchestrated to get around sovereignty restrictions, the United States is running numerous undercover laundering investigations against Mexico’s most powerful cartels. One D.E.A. official said it was not unusual for American agents to pick up two or three loads of Mexican drug money each week. A second official said that as Mexican cartels extended their operations from Latin America to Africa, Europe and the Middle East, the reach of the operations had grown as well. When asked how much money had been laundered as a part of the operations, the official would only say, “A lot.”

“If you’re going to get into the business of laundering money,” the official added, “then you have to be able to launder money.”

Former counternarcotics officials, who also would speak only on the condition of anonymity about clandestine operations, offered a clearer glimpse of their scale and how they worked. In some cases, the officials said, Mexican agents, posing as smugglers and accompanied by American authorities, pick up traffickers’ cash in Mexico. American agents transport the cash on government flights to the United States, where it is deposited into traffickers’ accounts, and then wired to companies that provide goods and services to the cartel.

In other cases, D.E.A. agents, posing as launderers, pick up drug proceeds in the United States, deposit them in banks in this country and then wire them to the traffickers in Mexico.

The former officials said that the drug agency tried to seize as much money as it laundered — partly in the fees the operatives charged traffickers for their services and another part in carefully choreographed arrests at pickup points identified by their undercover operatives.

And the former officials said that federal law enforcement agencies had to seek Justice Department approval to launder amounts greater than $10 million in any single operation. But they said that the cap was treated more as a guideline than a rule, and that it had been waived on many occasions to attract the interest of high-value targets.

“They tell you they’re bringing you $250,000, and they bring you a million,” one former agent said of the traffickers. “What’s the agent supposed to do then, tell them no, he can’t do it? They’ll kill him.”

It is not clear whether such operations are worth the risks. So far there are few signs that following the money has disrupted the cartels’ operations, and little evidence that Mexican drug traffickers are feeling any serious financial pain. Last year, the D.E.A. seized about $1 billion in cash and drug assets, while Mexico seized an estimated $26 million in money laundering investigations, a tiny fraction of the estimated $18 billion to $39 billion in drug money that flows between the countries each year.

Mexico has tightened restrictions on large cash purchases and on bank deposits in dollars in the past five years. But a proposed overhaul of the Mexican attorney general’s office has stalled, its architects said, as have proposed laws that would crack down on money laundered through big corporations and retail chains.

“Mexico still thinks the best way to seize dirty money is to arrest a trafficker, then turn him upside down to see how much change falls out of his pockets,” said Sergio Ferragut, a professor at the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico and the author of a book on money laundering, which he said was “still a sensitive subject for Mexican authorities.”

Mr. Calderón boasts that his government’s efforts — deploying the military across the country — have fractured many of the country’s powerful cartels and led to the arrests of about two dozen high-level and midlevel traffickers.

But there has been no significant dip in the volume of drugs moving across the country. Reports of human rights violations by police officers and soldiers have soared. And drug-related violence has left more than 40,000 people dead since Mr. Calderón took office in December 2006.

The death toll is greater than in any period since Mexico’s revolution a century ago, and the policy of close cooperation with Washington may not survive.

“We need to concentrate all our efforts on combating violence and crime that affects people, instead of concentrating on the drug issue,” said a former foreign minister, Jorge G. Castañeda, at a conference hosted last month by the Cato Institute in Washington. “It makes absolutely no sense for us to put up 50,000 body bags to stop drugs from entering the United States.”

18 comments:

  1. The US government are the biggest drug-traffickers in the world. The "war on drugs" is an oxymoron.

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  2. The Murricans are the good guys folks, is ok.
    move along now, its not illegal if the Murricans do it.

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  3. You are not allowed to buy products from brown people that make you "feel good". They're EVIL. The drug addicts life is so valuable to this country we are willing to hunt down the evil doers and make them pay!

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  4. They think we're so stupid as to believe this pile of horse shit. They're waving the drugs, the guns, the money right in our faces, and even tell us how they're doing it, and expect us to swallow it all? Everybody knows our glorious U.S. government has been trafficking drugs from mex and south america for some time now. Everybody knows they've been caught in illegal weapon deals all over the world. All this is is another media spin on things to make their corrupted efforts seem all legit. Remember, the U.S. government does not make the news, it is the news.

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  5. All this BS about the US Fed Govt all hat no cows the Fed is overpaid overfunded there performance sucks the efficiency of law enforcement has gone downhill with Fed grants Fed $ graft and skimmimg are a problem. Fed programs are usually a huge waste STINGS included. Local County and State get more done in 1 week than the fed does in 5 years. This article is typical of Fed Operations A waste of money FAST AND FURIOUS ,my ass. ATF,DEA - Very little bang for the buck.

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  6. “Mexico still thinks the best way to seize dirty money is to arrest a trafficker, then turn him upside down to see how much change falls out of his pockets” lolol so true. America is doing fine. A loaf of bread is still affordable. Most of the people here have a roof over there head and food on the table. No our country isnt perfect, far from it. But it works well enough that the majority of us live comfortably. If you dont like it, go out and vote to change it. Sitting around on a message board passing around conspiracy theories from your parent's Macbook isnt helping anything.

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  7. @ 1:13 i wish i had a Macbook, but yeah this country is still decent compared to others.

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  8. The people you see around here complaining, trust me they'd complain about any country. The grass is always greener...

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  9. Any one remember the "el chino" that chinese citizen whom was caught in his house with 206mil cash money and like with another 4mil of mexican money that`s the reason why this guys are looking to get their Money in banks so nobody will takes that much of cash out of they packets.that`s the reason reason all of the carteles are worry about their money if this much money was Seize from one individual and is closed to 1/4 of a billion dlls.just imagine how much money the cartels may have????? jst the Merida plan for mexico is funded with a billion dlls somebody have to pay back this money and is not the Mexican goverment! when it comes to drugs and Guns there is always a profit.

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  10. In 2011 Ive really opened my eyes to the crap our u.s goverment is doing to us and the world. My views have changed and when i hear news like this , i shake my head with dissapoitment once again. When did public officials loose the idea of helping out the common man. And im not a u.s basher, governments all across the world ignore and opress the people. Whats worse that they do what they want, or that all we do is rant and complain about our leaders and dont hold them accountable for there mistakes like im doing now. If I dont perform well at work, id have no job. They dont preform and we re-ellect or find another tool to fill there spot. Hope leaders know that there biting the hand that feeds them, the same hand that could give them a good bitch slap if needed. We generally look down at the middle east, but they should look down on us. Iran, syria, libya, egypt have all had civilian uprises becouse the people didnt like getting stepped on anymore. Not that we should start tearing shit up and overtake the streets, but we need to better educate ourself and better watch those we've chosen to represent us. If your not helping this country move forward, get your ass out of the way and let someone who does care take your place. God bless us. -
    Rick dogg, sorry for the long post

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  11. To recall a line from Watergate in the 1970's, this is a modified-limited hangout. The same as the US army admitted to protecting opium growers in Afghanistan. Release a limited amount of information so as to control the story. The kool aid drinking government boot-lickers and the know-nothings will swallow it. This is as close to an admission of government money laundering that we are going to get for now

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  12. “It makes absolutely no sense for us to put up 50,000 body bags to stop drugs from entering the United States.”

    AND NOW THE BEST: despite 50,000 body bags drugs are as freely available in the US as it has always been.

    WHEN WILL WE LEARN: the government is not to tell us what to do. FREEDOM to choose!
    L E G A L I Z E I T ! ! ! !

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  13. CRIME PAYS
    ALL MAN MADE LAWS WILL BE BROKEN
    GOVERMENT FEEDS OFF THESE BROKEN LAWS

    'ONE NATION UNDER GOD ,WITH LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FOR ALL'
    GOD BLESS AMERICA
    HAHAHAHA.

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  14. Los zetas are the dea...which is the same as the international banker tribe

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  15. follow the $ . never know where it will lead u ... I for one am ok with the govt laundering money as long as they follow it and pull in other criminal types within it's net.al queda types for example

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  16. These clowns will loose track of the money just like the other clowns lost track of the guns in operation fast and furious at the end the very same U.S government is arming the cartels and laundering there money the cartels and U.S feds are crime partners

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  17. The question remains - why is the mexican govt so reluctant to seize drug money and property? They never do it. They boast about how many vehicles, guns and ammo they "secure" but nothing else.

    The answer is - mexican politicians, police agencies, govt agencies are 100% crooked. They would be seizing/confiscating their own money. No one in mexico wants to "solve" the drug problem.

    Too many mexicans are making too much money from the drug traffic - the poet never said a word about the drug violence until his kid got caught up in it and was killed. Now he's all over mexico protesting the violence.

    Don't forget that mexico is the kidnapping capital of the world as well as a leader in extortion, robbery and human traffic - selling people.

    ReplyDelete

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