Colext/Macondo
Cantina virtual de los COLombianos en el EXTerior
--------------------------------------------------
Recientemente fu� denunciado por organismos vigilantes de los derechos
humanos el uso de helic�pteros por parte de grupos paramilitares, cuesta
trabajo imaginar como puede adquirirse un helic�ptero sin que las
autoridades se enteren. Sin embargo, el art�culo que anexo (debajo),
tomado del New York Times
(http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/10/national/10PESO.html)
muestra que no solamente esto, si no much�simo m�s es posible en el
negocio de las drogas il�citas.
Salu2. Mauricio
-----------------------------------------
U.S. Companies Tangled in Web of Drug
Dollars
By LOWELL BERGMAN
n a rainy day last June, a group of
corporate executives gathered in a
conference room at the Justice Department for
a meeting with Attorney General Janet Reno
and other top government officials.
The executives represented some of the pillars
of corporate America � Hewlett-Packard,
Ford Motor Company, Whirlpool. The session was not publicized
because those at the meeting shared an unlikely and potentially
embarrassing problem: their companies, they feared, were being
singled
out in the nation's war on drugs, and neither they nor the
government was
quite sure what to do.
With the intensifying federal crackdown on money laundering,
agents had
been tracking drug money into the accounts of American
corporations
and their distributors and dealers. In fact, federal officials
said, about $5
billion a year in Colombian drug money is used to buy goods and
services � from cigarettes to computer chips � from American
companies.
What makes that possible is a system known as the black-market
peso
exchange, a complex money trade that law enforcement officials
say has
become increasingly important to the Colombian narcotics trade.
The system � really a network of currency brokers with offices
in New
York, Miami, the Caribbean and South America � is essentially an
underground money market that lets the traffickers exchange
American
dollars for Colombian pesos. Those dollars, which stay in the
United
States, are then bought by Colombian companies that use them to
buy
American goods for sale back home.
But the government's efforts to seize that money have put it on
a collision
course with corporations, which say they are victims with no way
of
knowing that they and their distributors are being paid with
drug money.
As they met on June 6, those executives, lawyers and law
enforcement
officials found themselves grappling with a conundrum: when does
drug
money stop being drug money? How far does a company's
responsibility
go?
The questions have been confronting law enforcement officials
for years.
"What are we going to do?" asked Greg Passic, a former drug
enforcement agent who now advises the government on the
economics of
the narcotics industry. "We've got the Fortune 500 involved in
our drug-
money laundering process."
For a long time, because of lax enforcement of United States
currency
laws, the drug traffickers were able to launder billions of
dollars through
American financial institutions. A crackdown in the 1980's
pushed
traffickers to what they saw as a virtually fail-safe system for
getting back
their profits � the black-market peso exchange.
Their growing reliance on that system shows how deeply the drug
trade
has become entwined in the legitimate economies of the United
States,
Colombia and other nations.
Colombian officials said that as much as 45 percent of their
country's
imported consumer goods are bought with money laundered through
the
peso exchange.
On the American side, law enforcement officials said the
exchange has
largely eliminated the trade deficit with Colombia. The market,
said the
customs commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly, "is the ultimate nexus
between crime and commerce, using global trade to mask global
money
laundering."
So far, no large American company has faced criminal charges.
And
companies have almost always been able to prevent federal
officials from
keeping money that has been seized.
But in the last few years, as frustration has risen, the
government has
taken a tougher line. There have been Congressional hearings
intended to
put companies on notice by name. Prosecutors have issued
warnings and
stepped up efforts to seize laundered money.
At the same time, the government has encouraged companies to
institute
"know your customer" policies similar to those used in the
financial
industry. The policies gave dealers and distributors techniques
for
recognizing money laundering. Thus educated, the government
thought,
the companies would be less able to argue that they simply could
not
have known.
In drawing the line between legitimate and illegitimate profits,
the
government must not only prove that the money came from drug
deals; it
must show that the recipient "knew or should have known" its
source.
In the war on drugs, that line has proved very fuzzy.
Trading Dollars for Pesos
Congress passed the first money- laundering laws in the early
1970's �
requiring, among other things, that banks report any cash
transaction over
$10,000 � but the laws were loosely enforced. By 1979, the
Federal
Reserve Bank in Miami had more cash than the other federal
reserve
banks combined.
It took the uproar over the cocaine epidemic in the early 80's
for banks
to comply with the law. And with the resulting crackdown,
traffickers
resorted to the black market, which for decades had provided
Colombian businesses with dollars at less than the official
exchange rate
of 2,000 pesos to the dollar. The rate in Colombia is fixed by
the
government.
One peso broker recently agreed to describe how the system
works.
The process begins when the broker receives a call from a
Colombian
drug trafficker or his American representative. The two
negotiate an
exchange rate for pesos, usually 30 percent to 40 percent below
the
fixed rate. So $10,000 might be worth 12 million pesos instead
of 20
million at the official rate.
The dollars are then delivered to the broker, who promises to
deliver
pesos to the trafficker's bank account after the dollars are
sold to
Colombian businesses. The dealer's insurance is the broker's
knowledge
that to do otherwise would almost surely mean death.
The broker maintains several runners � "smurfs," in law
enforcement
lingo � who deposit the cash into hundreds of United States bank
accounts in amounts of less than $10,000, to avoid scrutiny.
At the same time, the broker's office in Colombia negotiates
with
business people there who want cheap dollars to buy everything
from
consumer goods to helicopters.
Usually, that exchange rate is 20 percent below market, so a
business
owner in Colombia might pay 16 million pesos, instead of 20
million
pesos at the fixed rate, for $10,000.
The pesos are then transferred � in this example, 12 million
pesos � to
the traffickers' accounts. The broker keeps the difference, 4
million pesos
in this instance. Then at the businessman's direction, the
dollars in the
American banks are used to pay for American goods.
The peso brokerage is one part of the process that supplies
Colombia
with inexpensive goods from the United States and around the
world.
Colombian authorities said the goods were often smuggled into
the
country, costing Colombia more than $300 million a year in tax
revenue.
Colombia has made collecting that lost revenue a priority. But
the black
market has considerable appeal because it puts a lot of
inexpensive
foreign goods on the Colombian market.
The exchange has also increased American exports to Colombia.
"This is positive for U.S. business, there is no doubt about
it," said Mike
Wald, who runs a consortium of law enforcement agencies in
Florida
focusing on the peso exchange. "The Colombian, if he pays less
for his
dollars, can buy more goods. That's a pretty obvious economic
fact. But
we have to realize where this money originates. It's drug
money."
Tangled With Drug Money
Two companies that have turned up in the American government's
anti-laundering efforts are Phillip Morris and Bell Helicopter
Textron.
Phillip Morris products in particular have been a major presence
in
Colombia. Marlboro cigarettes are readily available at prices
investigators said indicated that they were bought with black
market
dollars and smuggled into the country.
Earlier this year, Phillip Morris was sued in the Eastern
District of New
York by the Colombian tax collectors. The federal lawsuit
accused the
company of being involved in cigarette smuggling and in the
laundering of
drug proceeds.
Phillip Morris has denied the allegations, saying that it did
not know its
products were being exploited for money laundering. In addition,
without
admitting wrongdoing, it recently signed an agreement with
Colombia,
pledging to stop its products from entering the black market or
being
used to launder money.
In 1995, in Federal District Court in San Juan, Puerto Rico,
Phillip
Morris's former distributors in northern South America were
indicted for
laundering $40 million in black market pesos.
A member of the defense lawyers said the money was used to buy
Phillip
Morris cigarettes, liquor and other products for the Colombian
market.
But the defense team member said the defendants did not know
that the
money came from drug sales.
Phillip Morris severed its relationship with the defendants in
1998 and
said it did not know that its products were being smuggled or
that black
market money was used to buy them.
In another case, Bell Helicopter is challenging the seizure of
$300,000
from its accounts, money, according to court documents, that was
generated by drug smuggling.
It was part of more than $1 million that the United States
believed was
supplied a peso-exchange broker to buy a Bell aircraft. The
helicopter
was seized in Panama at the request of the United States.
The case has become a sore point for American law enforcement in
part
because the helicopter was sold to a Colombian businessman
linked to
the country's right-wing paramilitaries.
Seeking Cooperation
The deepening struggle between prosecutors and business
executives is
what led to the meeting with Attorney General Reno and other
government officials, including Deputy Attorney General Eric H.
Holder
and Deputy Treasury Secretary Stuart E. Eizenstat. The companies
invited were Hewlett-Packard, Ford, General Motors, Sony,
Westinghouse, Whirlpool and General Electric Company, Treasury
officials said.
None of the companies returned phone calls seeking comment,
except
General Electric and Sony. Sony said it would have no comment.
But
General Electric's counsel, Scott Gilbert, said his company
instituted a
strict compliance program five years ago, after reports that its
refrigerators were being used in money-laundering operations.
As part of its policy, Mr. Gilbert said General Electric warns
dealers to
be aware of "red flags" � a customer's lack of interest in
discounts, an
unwillingness to give information about the company, or unusual
forms of
payment like large amounts of cash or checks written on the
account of a
third party.
The new policy has cut sales of appliances to Latin America by
23,000
units, or over 20 percent, said an executive at General
Electric.
Alan Dooty, a customs official, said the companies had been
selected for
the June meeting because their products had shown up in the
black
market in Colombia. The exception was General Electric, which he
singled out as a "good citizen."
Before the meeting, some of the companies expressed concern that
they
would be punished. But once they arrived, Mr. Dooty said, they
were
assured that the government was seeking cooperation.
A follow-up session in July bogged down in legal murk.
An industry representative familiar with the meeting said: "The
Justice and
Treasury Departments realized that they were trying to identify
drug
money that had morphed, been transformed, in layers of
transactions
involving distributors, authorized dealers, financing
arrangements with
unregulated money lenders called `factors' and the other
realities of
commercial life."
More meetings are scheduled for this fall.
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Mauricio Realpe, Bi�logo, M.Sc.
Candidato a Doctor en Ciencias Bioqu�micas
Instituto de Biotecnologia (IBT)
Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico (UNAM)
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>><<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
..." lo que Bol�var dej� sin hacer, sin hacer esta hasta hoy,
porque Bol�var tiene que hacer en Am�rica todav�a"
Jos� Mart�
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