Western banks 'reaping billions from Colombian cocaine trade'

[xchrom]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jun/02/western-banks-colombian-cocaine-trade



Soldiers torch a cocaine processing laboratory near the city of Cucuta, in northern Colombia, as part of the country's war on drugs. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images



The vast profits made from drug production and trafficking are overwhelmingly reaped in rich "consuming" countries – principally across Europe and in the US – rather than war-torn "producing" nations such as Colombia and Mexico, new research has revealed. And its authors claim that financial regulators in the west are reluctant to go after western banks in pursuit of the massive amount of drug money being laundered through their systems.

The most far-reaching and detailed analysis to date of the drug economy in any country – in this case, Colombia – shows that 2.6% of the total street value of cocaine produced remains within the country, while a staggering 97.4% of profits are reaped by criminal syndicates, and laundered by banks, in first-world consuming countries.

"The story of who makes the money from Colombian cocaine is a metaphor for the disproportionate burden placed in every way on 'producing' nations like Colombia as a result of the prohibition of drugs," said one of the authors of the study, Alejandro Gaviria, launching its English edition last week.

"Colombian society has suffered to almost no economic advantage from the drugs trade, while huge profits are made by criminal distribution networks in consuming countries, and recycled by banks which operate with nothing like the restrictions that Colombia's own banking system is subject to."

[MadHound]

1. D'uh!

Other folks who are making massive quantities off the illegal drug trade: The legal profession, bail bonds industry, prisons, cops, prosecutor's office, politicians in general. It is because of this small, but extremely powerful group of people that drugs of any kind will never be legalized.

[99Forever]

2. Whodda thunk it?

Drug lords aren't sinking the money they make back into social programs for the betterment of the poor in their countries?

Now there's a news flash, they are such solid citizens in all of the other ways.