Title: Drug Trafficking and Money Laundering - FPIF
Headings: Drug Trafficking and Money Laundering
Drug Trafficking and Money Laundering
Key Points
Problems with Current U.S. Policy
Key Problems
Toward a New Foreign Policy
Key Recommendations

Content: This service can involve offshore accounts, moving large sums of money from one country to another, devising intricate networks of accounts, and helping to purchase homes, businesses, and investments with laundered funds. The service can also include setting up “concentration accounts,” where funds from various individuals are commingled and their origins not identified. Citibank’s private banking service, for instance, laundered tens of millions of dollars in drug money for Raul Salinas, the jailed brother of former Mexican President Carlos Salinas. Although the U.S. is one of the world’s leading money laundering centers, very few money laundering cases are actually filed—an indication that this crime is difficult to detect and/or that inadequate resources are being devoted to enforcement. In 1995, only 62 criminal money-laundering cases were filed with U.S. attorneys, of the 138 defendants, 52 were convicted. In May 1998, however, the Justice and Treasury departments announced the successful culmination of “Operation Casablanca,” hailed as “the largest, most comprehensive drug money laundering case in the history of U.S law enforcement.” The three-year sting operation (involving some 200 undercover agents)