More than $100 bullion in illicit profits form the sale of heroin, cocaine, and marijuana are smuggled, wired, or shipped out of the United States each year. The cash, often in 10- and 20-dollar bills is disguised as legitimate capital and, eventually, used in legal real estate and business ventures, not to mention illegitimate criminal activities throughout the United States and other countries.
The process is called money laundering, and it's a multinational, hugely profitable business that has law-enforcement authorities in this country and elsewhere working overtime just to keep up.
The magnitude of the problem in this hemisphere was illustrated when U.S. Attorney General Dick Thornburgh announced that federal authorities had cracked a billion-dollar international money-laundering operation tied to the infamous Medillin drug cartel. Headquartered in Colombia, the cartel is responsible for about 81 percent of the world's supply of illicit cocaine. A two-year investigation by the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the Customs Service, and the IRS--dubbed "Operation Polar Cap"--netted $45 million in drug profits, jewelry, and real estate, as well as half a ton of cocaine.
According to Thornburgh, about $1.2 billion in cash was routed through two South American banks, Banco de Occidente of Panama and Banco de Occidente of Colombia, during the undercover investigation. Both institutions were named in indictments handed up in March by a federal grand jury in Atlanta. They were charged with using bank accounts in Colombia, controlled by Medellin cartel bosses, to launder drug proceeds generated in the United States.
The complicated undercover investigation, noted DEA Administrator John Lawn, began in October 1986 in Atlanta when Colombian drug dealers contacted undercover DEA agents in that city about the possibility of laundering drug profits through banks in Central and South America. Undercover agents set up a sting operation and, according to Lawn, the DEA almost immediately began moving cash for the cartel.
"Actually, we were told we were not processing the money fast enough and that we could take a lesion from a laundering operation in Los Angeles known as La Mina (the mine)," Lawn said. "They said the Los Angeles operation could launder their money in 48 hours."
Undercover DEA agents from Atlanta met with the Los Angeles money launderers and discovered the operation transferred drug proceeds and laundered money from several U.S. cities to Panama, Colombia, and Uruguay. Lawn said that after other federal authorities were called in, Operation Polar Cap was under way.
"This was a significant operation," said Lawn. "I believe we hit a major, if not the major, money-laundering operation in the United States. As an example, he said, when federal agents shut down the Los Angeles operation, the telephone "began ringing off the hook" in Atlanta and undercover agents there moved "$4 million in three days."
The undercover investigation, although successful, certainly did not end money-laundering schemes involving U.S.-generated drug profits and foreign-based drug bosses. Federal authorities admit that the best they can
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