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No Surprise Here, Either: DEA Laundering Profits from Mexican Cartels

COMMENT: No one famil­iar with the long his­to­ry of com­plic­i­ty of ele­ments of CIA and oth­er intel­li­gence ser­vices will be sur­prised at this.

Are they actu­al­ly work­ing to fur­ther the cause of jus­tice or the cause of “Just Us”?

Are they actu­al­ly track­ing the funds for the pur­pose of even­tu­al inter­dic­tion or to shore up the finan­cial sys­tem?

“U.S. Drug Agents Laun­der Prof­its of Mex­i­can Car­tels” by Gin­ger Thomp­son; The New York Times; 12/3/2011.

EXCERPT: 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. . . .

Discussion

One comment for “No Surprise Here, Either: DEA Laundering Profits from Mexican Cartels”

  1. Dave,

    Here’s a fol­low-up NYT’s arti­cle a few days lat­er:

    http://ce399fascism.wordpress.com/2011/12/09/dea-complicit-in-mexican-drug-trade-garywebb-rolling-in-his-grave-nyt-51211/

    Cheers,

    ce399

    Posted by ce399 | December 9, 2011, 7:51 pm

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