Photo: AAMIR QURESHI/AFP/Getty Images
By: The opinion Posted Mar 28, 2023, 1:15 pm EDT
The United States government recently delivered an annual report on threat assessment, in which it warns that organized crime in Mexico is using the transnational financial network and the channels for sending and receiving remittances legitimate to launder billions of dollars.
According to the report, Mexican transnational criminal organizations, including drug cartels and organized crime, regularly use shell companies to hide their identity and may rely on professional money launderers such as accountants, lawyers, notaries, and real estate brokers, to gain access to legitimate financial systems.
However, they also use bulk cash smuggling, exploitation of legitimate remittance channelsthe purchase of real estate in the United States, structured deposits, trade-based money laundering, and wire transfers to move and launder illicit proceeds.
Only last year, Mexico received a record of 58,497 million dollars in remittances, which implied an increase of 13.4% compared to 2021 and the ninth consecutive annual increase, according to data from the Bank of Mexico (Banxico).
But an alarming fact is that Around 4.4 billion dollars, that is, 7.6% of the remittances sent to Mexico in 2022, could come from organized crimein an operation that would serve to launder the money obtained from drug trafficking, according to a report by the Mexican association Signos Vitales.
“The enormous increase in remittances in recent years is a reflection of a very complex socioeconomic situation that worsened with the pandemic, which has caused the flow of (Mexican) migrants to the United States to grow again,” he explained in an interview with EFE the president of Vital Signs, Enrique Cárdenas.
“That is the backdrop, the internal precariousness and the number of people who are waiting for money to be sent to them,” added the economist.
The alarm went off when they detected that remittances sent from states such as Minnesota (on the Canadian border), which hosts 0.5% of the Mexican population in the United States, accounted for 8.3% of the total, only below California and Texas, states that, being on the border with Mexico, they have traditionally welcomed more Mexican migrants.
“The most powerful reason not to believe that these are Mexicans sending remittances from Minnesota is that, the amount sent is equivalent to the gross income of the entire Mexican population during the year, so it is financially impossible“, indicates the document.
It is also detailed that in more than 200 municipalities in Mexico the number of transfers exceeded the total number of householdswhich suggests that 100% of the houses received money from abroad, an unlikely situation.
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