DEA drug money laundering operation

waltky · Dec 4, 2011

Uncle Ferd says dey need to look into dem cartels buyin' up mobile home parks an' movin' their drug gangs up here...

DEA launders millions in Mexican drug cartel profits
NYT: The operations, intended to track traffickers' cash, raise the same concerns as Fast and Furious.

WASHINGTON Undercover American narcotics agents have laundered or smuggled millions of dollars in drug proceeds as part of Washingtons expanding role in Mexicos 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 agencys 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 werent 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.

Fast and Furious concerns

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 cartels command and control, is a very time consuming process. These people arent 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 cant even go into.

Moving into Mexico
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waltky · Dec 6, 2011

Granny says dey launderin' their money by buyin' up mobile home parks an' movin' their gang-bangers up here...

Issa expands Fast and Furious probe to include alleged money laundering
12/05/11 - Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) has requested a briefing with the Justice Department over a news report that U.S. law enforcement officials helped Mexican drug cartels launder millions of dollars into the country.

The chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee made the request in a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, in which he questioned DOJ heads ability to lead the agency. Issa has been investigating the DOJs authorization of a botched gun-tracking operation for most of the year and has increasingly criticized Holder, who is set to appear before the House Judiciary Committee on Thursday.

The existence of such a program again calls your leadership into question, said Issa in his letter. The managerial structure you have implemented lacks appropriate operational safeguards to prevent the implementation of such dangerous schemes. The consequences have been disastrous. According to an article published in the New York Times on Sunday, undercover agents with the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) helped transport millions of dollars in cash across the U.S.-Mexico border in an effort to study and dismantle the trafficking routes of drug cartels.

The article said the DEA allowed the drug cartels to continue functioning as they tracked their money moving methods. A spokesperson for the DEA said the agency was not planning to reveal the details of particular operations to the public, but declined to state whether it would do so for members of Congress. "We have been working collaboratively with the Mexican government to fight money laundering for years," said Dawn Dearden, a spokesperson for the DEA, in a e-mail. "As a result of this cooperation, we have seized illicit transnational criminal organization money all around the world through our partnership with law enforcement. We do not discuss the operational aspects of law enforcement activities."

The tactics are similar to those employed under Operation Fast and Furious, in which agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) monitored the sale of thousands of firearms in the Southwest region to known and suspected straw buyers for Mexican drug cartels in an attempt to study and dismantle their trafficking patterns. But, agents have testified before Issa, the operation didnt provide adequate surveillance of the weapons, allowing them to walk, only to be discovered later at crime scenes. Two guns solde under Fast and Furious were found last year at the murder scene of Border Patrol Brian Terry.

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waltky · Dec 30, 2011

Hezbollah & drug cartels money laundering scheme exposed...

US targets money laundering activity for drug cartels
Sat, Dec 31, 2011 - US President Barack Obamas administration said that it was hitting two Lebanese-Colombian men and dozens of companies they run with sanctions for allegedly laundering money on behalf of Mexican and Colombian drug cartels.

Officials said on Thursday that one of the companies was tied to an alleged drug kingpin who has been accused of running a money-laundering scheme on behalf of the militant group Hezbollah. The move blocks any assets in the US belonging to Lebanese-Colombian nationals Jorge Fadlallah Cheaitelly and Mohammed Zouheir El Khansa, and blocks Americans from doing business with them. Panamanian and Colombian authorities did not immediately return calls seeking comment.

The US Treasury Department said Cheaitelly leads a Panama-based drug trafficking and money laundering organization with operations as far as Hong Kong. El Khansa is seen as a key partner. The department also applied sanctions to nine people with ties to the men, and 28 entities in Colombia, Panama, Lebanon and Hong Kong.

The companies placed under US sanction include electronics stores, luggage outlets and several money-exchange businesses. Office of Foreign Assets Control Director Adam Szubin said the US was forcing a major money laundering network out of the international financial system, undermining its ability to help the cartels.

According to the Treasury Department, Cheaitelly has ties with Ayman Joumaa, who has been indicted in US federal court on charges of leading a drug conspiracy that provided income for Hezbollah, which has been designated by the US State Department as a terrorist organization since 1997. The Drug Enforcement Administration has alleged that Joumaas organization laundered money using 50 used car lots in the US. Cars were exported to Lebanon and West Africa.

Source
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TopCat · Jan 9, 2012

This isn't anything new. They set up a bank in the Cayman Islands in the 80's and did the same with the Cali cartel. It's in Jeffrey Robinson's classic money laundering book The Laundrymen.

waltky · Jan 10, 2012

DEA helpin' cartels with their drug profits...

US Agents Helped Drug Traffickers Launder Millions
Tue Jan 10, 2012 - Mexico's government allowed a group of undercover U.S. anti-drug agents and their Colombian informant to launder millions in cash for a powerful Mexican drug trafficker and his Colombian cocaine supplier, according to documents made public Monday.

The Mexican magazine Emeequis published portions of documents that describe how Drug Enforcement Administration agents, a Colombian trafficker-turned-informant and Mexican federal police officers in 2007 infiltrated the Beltran Leyva drug cartel and a cell of money launderers for Colombia's Valle del Norte cartel in Mexico. The group of officials conducted at least 15 wire transfers to banks in the United States, Canada and China and smuggled and laundered about $2.5 million in the United States. They lost track of much of that money. In his testimony, the DEA agent in charge of the operation says DEA agents posing as pilots flew at least one shipment of cocaine from Ecuador to Madrid through a Dallas airport.

The documents are part of an extradition order against Harold Mauricio Poveda-Ortega, a Colombian arrested in Mexico in 2010 on charges of supplying cocaine to Arturo Beltran Leyva. A year earlier, Beltran Leyva was killed in a shootout with Mexican marines in the city of Cuernavaca, south of Mexico City. The documents show Mexico approved Poveda-Ortega's extradition to the United States in May, but neither Mexican nor U.S. authorities would confirm whether he has been extradited. Mexican authorities listed his first name as "Haroldo." In a statement issued late Monday, Mexico's Attorney General's Office said it cooperates with the United States in combatting money laundering and said the Poveda-Ortega case, like others of its kind, "are carried out strictly within the legal framework."

While the statement said that "coordinated money laundering investigations are carried out exclusively by Mexican authorities," it also noted that "sometimes, these investigations require specialized techniques to detect money laundering, which each agency carries out within its own jurisdiction." U.S. officials did not respond to requests for comment. The documents offer rare glimpses into the way U.S. anti-drug agents are operating in Mexico, an often sensitive subject in a country touchy about national sovereignty. On one occasion, the informant who began working for the DEA in 2003 after a drug arrest met with the girlfriend of a Colombian drug trafficker in Dallas and offered to move cocaine for their group around the world for $1,000 per kilo. In a follow-up meeting, the informant introduced the woman to a DEA agent posing as a pilot. The woman is identified as the girlfriend of Horley Rengifo Pareja, who was detained in 2007 accused of laundering money and drug trafficking.

Another scene described the informant negotiating a deal to move a cocaine shipment from Ecuador to Spain and minutes later being taken to a house where he met with Arturo Beltran Leyva. Beltran Leyva was once a top lieutenant for the Sinaloa drug cartel, led by Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman. But he split from the cartel shortly after his brother was arrested in 2008, setting off a bloody battle between the former allies. Fractured cartels have led to an increase of drug violence in Mexico. According to several counts more than 45,000 people have been killed since late 2006, though the government stopped giving figures on drug war dead when the toll hit nearly 35,000 a year ago. On Monday, police in western Mexico found the bodies of 13 men at a gas station in the state of Michoacan.

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BleedingHeadKen · Jan 10, 2012

It just goes to show that what they aren't fighting is crime, but disobedience to government. If you are obedient and meet the proper requirements (employment or contract from government and perhaps a badge) then when you do it, it's not a crime.

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DEA drug money laundering operation

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