Drug crackdown has little effect on money laundering

[Adsos Letter]

Source: LA Times

Reporting from Mexico City -- For a B-team, Los Mapaches sure seemed to be living it up. The soccer club from the small town of Nueva Italia in western Mexico had the finest vehicles, new uniforms every game and unusually high salaries.

The team was one of many covers, federal prosecutors allege, that Wenceslao Alvarez, alias El Wencho, used to hide and move millions of dollars for the so-called Gulf cartel.

In the Mexican government's bloody, 2-year-old war on drug traffickers, one component of the trade remains largely untouched: money laundering. The network that helps turn ill-gotten gains into legal tender is a crucial linchpin that enables traffickers to live large, expand their operations deep into the U.S., pay off cops and politicians and buy increasingly sophisticated weaponry.

"You can arrest thousands of but if you don't touch the financial enterprises, the business just goes on . . . and becomes more violent," said Edgardo Buscaglia, an expert on organized crime who has advised both the United Nations and Mexican officials.


Read more: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-drug-money-laundering22-2008dec22,0,7541266.story

[TomInTib]

1. So who is doing all the coke?

Everyone I know has switched.

But the best shit is coming from Burma.

So, where is that, Warriors?

[balantz]

3. Huge meth labs are down there now. Meth is in big use stateside and worldwide n/t.

[balantz]

2. I've been wondering for awhile if CIA or some private mercenaries

might be behind some of these wars, changing the playing field or something and maybe making room for some kind of big "help" from north of the border.

We know it wouldn't be the first time.

[comtec]

4. Well.. DUH!!!!!

It's never the little guys, the employees, as it were, but the assholes at the top directing everything.
and they will N E V E R be touched... gotta love unregulated capitalism :(