Posts
All Comments
Despite strict rules set by international regulatory bodies that require banks to "know their customer," make inquiries about the source of large deposits of cash and report suspicious activity, they have failed to do so in a number of high-profile cases and instead have allowed billions in dirty money to be laundered.
European banks are being forced to abandon their efforts to sell off trillions of euros worth of loans, mortgages and real estate after a series of talks with potential investors broke down, leaving many already struggling firms with piles of assets they can barely support.
Securitisation is at the heart of such arrangements. Assets with low ratings are pooled together into diversified portfolios in order to attain a higher rating. The resulting asset requires less cash and as a result of the higher rating can be more readily pledged to the ECB or to other banks to borrow against.
The evolving anti-laundering campaign could change the tone of the Mexican government's battle by striking at the heart of the cartels' financial empire, analysts say.
For example, Mexican traffickers are taking advantage of blind spots in monitoring the nearly $400 billion of legal commerce between the two countries. The so-called trade-based laundering allows crime groups to disguise millions of dollars in tainted funds as ordinary merchandise — say, onions or precious metals, as they are trucked across the border.
In one case, the merchandise of choice was tons of polypropylene pellets used for making plastic. Exports of the product from the United States to Mexico appeared legitimate, but law enforcement officials say that by declaring a slightly inflated value, traders were able to hide an average of more than $1 million a month, until suspicious banks shut down the operation.
There is also stubborn resistance among those who profit from their role as middlemen for big transactions.
One such group is notaries, who in Mexico have a function much like attorneys in the U.S. They handle nearly all real estate transactions and have battled a proposal that would require them to report how each purchase was paid for. Notaries say launderers would probably respond by skipping the paperwork altogether when buying cars and houses, only adding to the black-market economy.
Like Israel, Greece is in a period of less than splendid diplomatic isolation, though for very different reasons, and that is exactly what Dimas, in concert with Prime Minister Lucas Papademos, will attempt to reverse in a relatively short period.
Though the focus has been on Greece’s isolation within the European Union, which has for decades been the country’s pillar of security, the geostrategic vulnerability resulting from the economic crisis will test Athens’ ability to respond to Turkish expansionism - from Ankara’s claims to Aegean islets to its objections to Greece delineating its exclusive economic zone with Cyprus.
The American intelligence think tank Stratfor, which is associated with the US intelligence community, declared in a November 21 monograph that “the question for Greece is whether it will be able to accept its much-reduced geopolitical role”. The think tank warns that if Athens does not find a way to be useful to a great power, Greece’s geopolitical role will “depend on the strategies that Turkey adopts”.
Romanian mayor Florin Cazacu staged a six-day hunger strike last week over cuts to heating subsidies which meant his town of Brad could not afford fuel oil and 10,000 of its residents, public institutions and hospital faced a bitter winter.
"More importantly, at the officer safety level, two of these incidents suggest that US law enforcement officers should expect to engage Cartel foot soldiers armed with AK-47 semi-automatic rifles as standard issue weapons (at a minimum). The 7.62mm armor piercing round of the AK-47 will defeat standard issue US law enforcement body armor.... Additionally, the cartel tactical units/personnel initiated offensive actions against US law enforcement personnel in three of these highlighted incidents."
The trafficking of weapons over the U.S.-Mexico border is well-documented -- lesser known but also significant is the sale of U.S. weapons to Guatemalan government contractors, which are then siphoned off to criminal groups.
The President’s Adviser on narcotics warned Monday that real mafias are taking root in Dominican Republic, whose society has been neglectful by ignoring their mechanisms and presence, calling the recent executions of local and foreign citizens, their “simple tertiary manifestations.”
The Brazilian and Bolivian police are starting joint anti-drug operations, an acknowledgement of the scale of the cross border problem, perhaps heralding a new direction for the Bolivians, who have resisted working closely with the United States on the drug issue.
War has begun. Firefights rage between gunmen loyal to Dudus and the government’s forces. Four police officers and soldiers have been killed, a police station firebombed. Tivoli Gardens’ multicoloured tower blocks were built in a courageous attempt to move impoverished Jamaicans from hellhole slums into modern housing. Now they have become Dudus’s fiefdom, a state within a state.
The head of the UN's Office of Drugs and Crime in Mexico City, Antonio Mazzitelli, believes Mexican drug cartels have struck deals with Australian members of the powerful Italian mafia, the 'Ndrangheta, to capitalise on the country's hugely profitable cocaine trade.
Mr Mazzitelli told The Australian that the Mexican cartels had turned to the 'Ndrangheta -- which was formed in the Calabria region in Italy's south and is now the most powerful of the Italian mafias -- to help them establish business in new markets.
The countries of Central Europe, especially the Czech Republic and Hungary, are used as centers for coordination, communication and conciliation between very powerful international crime syndicates, which have managed to install their headquarters in the heart of the European Union.
The prime minister said while there have been efforts to enhance patrolling of Jamaica’s territorial waters; this isn't enough to play a significant role in disabling the drug trade.
However, there is some evidence that stalled discussions over independence or autonomy for Western Sahara may have created a marriage of convenience among some elements of the independence struggle and AQIM. If accurate, these reports suggest that some members of the Algeria-based Polisario Front have joined al-Qaeda in trafficking drugs, arms and humanitarian aid in North Africa's desert borderlands.
London. Latin American organized crime groups involved in cocaine trafficking have found new transit area on the Balkans for cocaine trafficking between Latin American countries and Europe. These are the findings of the European Police Service Europol and the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction.
“Our findings are that the route through the Balkans is being used more and more often for cocaine trafficking from Latin America to the EU. It is important that new trend to become one of the priorities of the national authorities for combating drug trafficking”, director of the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction Wolfgang Gotz told BBC.
The Washington DC-based agency said 'traffickers increasingly take advantage of the Philippines' long and porous maritime borders to use the country as a transit point for high-grade cocaine and heroin shipments, primarily from India and Pakistan.'
Latin American drug barons have been exposed as a crucial source of funds for al-Qaida by paying them to ensure the safe passage of cocaine across North Africa and towards Europe.
For now, we will name two sites where tons of cocaine are concealed in the Gambia. We are talking about billions of dollars of street value of cocaine hidden somewhere in the former British colony. How comes that Gambia’s anti narcotic officers are unable to trace the hidden cocaine? Why is the National Drug Enforcement Agency transferred to the President’s office? How can the NDEA investigate the President when it is answerable to the Head of State? How can Jammeh effectively supervise the NDEA when there is a conflict of interest here? Is Jammeh aware of the information circulating allegedly linking him with the arrested South American nationals currently going to court on cocaine trafficking? Who owns the hidden cocaine?
Yet while these off-grid systems have proved their worth, the lack of an effective distribution network or a reliable way of financing the start-up costs has prevented them from becoming more widespread.
“The big problem for us now is there is no business model yet,” said John Maina, executive coordinator of Sustainable Community Development Services, or Scode, a nongovernmental organization based in Nakuru, Kenya, that is devoted to bringing power to rural areas.
The Malian security forces latest arrests of major suspected drug traffickers belonging to the Algerian backed Polisario Front come to confirm a long running accusation by the Moroccan government of collusion between the Western Sahara separatist group, Sahel bandits and the terrorist organization ' Al-Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb “(AQIM).
This development, certainly, will put more pressure on the international community to hasten finalizing the status of the [Western Sahara] provinces with the adoption of a modified version of the Moroccan Autonomy Plan. Major capitals forced to face the dangerous ramification of keeping the Algerian area of Tindouf lawless and in the hands of a [Western Sahara Separatist] militia incapable of securing an area riffled with drugs, weapons and terrorists.
He added that it was known as 'Polisario' because 90 percent of its members come from camps of the Polisario Front, which is fighting for the independence of Western Sahara from Morocco.
In light of the Council of Europe report on KLA crimes in Albania, Tirana must stop ducking responsibility for such abuses and start investigating crimes, whoever committed them.
Charge d'affaires for the US Embassy in Freetown, Glenn Fedzer, wrote in the secret cable that President Ernest Bai Koroma personally directed police not to investigate then Transport Minister, Kemoh Sesay.
Sesay's brother Mohamed, arrested as a key suspect in the cocaine bust, is currently serving a five-year prison sentence.
Sierra Leone's government disputes the information in the cable, saying it reflects the subjective viewpoint of an individual and is not based in fact.
Unisa Sesay is Communications Director at the Office of the President:
'Absolutely, as I said, they are far removed from reality and one starts doubting in fact the sources of this type of information,' said Sesay. 'Because you know our newspapers are full of a lot of speculations, rumors. So I mean it is absolutely untrue- What is in those cables is not true at all.'
The cable also suggests that the appointments of Kemoh Sesay as Transport Minister and his brother as manager of the National Football team were possibly made to facilitate drug trafficking.
Drawing from news reports that are seemingly confirmed by an unnamed source (redacted in the document obtained via Peru's La Republica newspaper), the document dated 12 March 2009, paints a disparaging picture of an army that takes payments from drug traffickers to allow passage of illegal narcotics, sells drug traffickers excess fuel supplies (presumably to process the coca into cocaine hydrochloride or HCl), and may even control some drug routes themselves.
Thirty-four per cent of Moroccans admit to having paid a bribe in the past 12 months, according to a recent study by Transparency International.
The facts In agreement with the information obtained by DL in sources the DNCD, the lieutenant colonel Quinones it was catched in Venezuela with a drug shipment it tried when them to remove from that country.
Diariolibre.com adds that Quinones aroused the suspicion of Venezuela’s authorities when he arrived as a 'hitchhiker' aboard a Dominican airline, but passed through the immigration desk as a crew member.
Austrian police have found secret bank accounts belonging to embattled former Croatian prime minister Ivo Sanader, which reportedly hold some €1.2 million, Croatian media report.
The Council of Europe's Legal Affairs Committee today adopted a draft resolution calling for investigations into allegations that top Kosovo officials were part of an organised crime network that trafficked organs.
United Serb List leader Radmila Trajkovic said that her list, a coalition of parties, does not want to join Prime Minister Hashim Thaci's government.
Reporting on the cables, German newspaper Der Spiegel said: “Almost every single sentence in the embassy reports speaks with disdain of [Kenya's] President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga.”
The envoy described President Kibaki, Prime Minister Raila Odinga and Cabinet ministers as beneficiaries of grand corruption.
But according to Hon. Osei Kwame Prempeh, the revelations clearly indicate that the drug war [in Ghana] is far from over.
He told Citi News that President Mills’ confession to the US Ambassador that elements of his government are already compromised clearly shows that all is not well.
The Nsuta Kwamang Beposo MP is of the view that if statistics about drug related arrests shows a reduction, as the NDC has been touting, it can only be because there are compromised elements in the government.
A series of United States cables leaked by the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks allege the Ayoob family's involvement in drug trafficking networks through Mozambique and southern Africa.
[Ghana's] Head of Policy Evaluation and Oversight Unit of the Government, Dr. Tony Aidoo, has sought to downplay UK-based WikkiLeaks damaging details that President Mills believes “elements of his government are already compromised” in the drug trade, and asserts that it is not surprising for a developing country like Ghana to be faced with drug trafficking challenges.
Ghana’s Executive Secretary of the Narcotics Control Board (NACOB) has threatened that he will no longer share intelligence with Ghana’s Western partners over drug trafficking between the two regions.
Mr Yaw Akrasi Sarpong’s threat follows the leakage of confidential discussions he had with some embassy officers of the US over the worsening narcotics problem in Ghana as well as leaked discussions between Ghana’s President and the Assistant Secretary to US President Barack Obama.
The cable, which is among more than 200,000 obtained by whistle-blower website WikiLeaks, stated that Cuban anti-drug officials were frustrated with Jamaica's efforts to battle drug trafficking in the region.
Douglas termed the drugs trade and other criminal activities in the West Africa as 'becoming institutionalized,' especially in Guinea Bissau and increasing so throughout the coastal states. She indicated that the UK has a good understanding about how the drugs arrive to West Africa, but not how they go North from there and how they are related to terrorist issues. Carter said the Northern transit routes are varied across land, air, and sea and that to date there is no information to indicate that the narcotics trade has links with terrorist activities, in particular AQIM. He did add that the Hizbollah networks in West Africa might tap into the drug trade due to its high levels of profit. Douglas agreed it was important to stymie the drug trade before it becomes more institutionalized, before it destabilizes the region further, and before terrorists begin using it as a source of revenue.
According to the cables, Ghanaian narcotics control board (Nacob) officers working with British officials:
• Actively helped traffickers, even calling the criminals on their mobile phones to tell them when to travel to avoid detection.
• Sabotaged sensitive drug scanners provided to the Ghanaian government.
• Channeled passengers including pastors and bank managers and their wives, into the security-exempt VVIP lounge despite suspicions they were trafficking drugs.
Kosovo's prime minister is the head of a "mafia-like" Albanian group responsible for smuggling weapons, drugs and human organs through eastern Europe, according to a Council of Europe inquiry report on organised crime.
There is a brewing tension within Britain over the sense that the budget is being balanced on the backs of the working class, while City bankers continue to pull in massive bonuses. It's a tension that will be familiar across Europe; in country after country pain is being exacted on those who feel themselves to be victims, at the behest of those who seem to be doing just fine. In country after country, occasional eruptions of public passion will come close to boiling over, as they did yesterday in Britain. And the real austerity has only begun; the cuts next year will be far more severe than what's happened already. Inevitably, some real trouble will develop somewhere; the near-miss, finally, won't miss. And in the ugly politics that follows, truly distressing scenarios, like a departure of one or several countries from the euro area, could suddenly seem much more realistic.
'Limited resources also undermine the effort: while there are 30,000 U.S. CBP officers on the 1,926-mile Mexican/U.S. border, only 125 Mexican immigration officials monitor the 577-mile border with Guatemala,' the document states.
'The weakness of the state (Guatemalan government), the pervasive violence, the widespread corruption, and the country's strategic location for drug trafficking are creating a very dangerous cocktail.'
Kenya's government has revealed that almost a third of the annual budget is lost to corruption.
