Posts Tagged cartels

Wachovia Ignores Mexican Money Laundering While Chase Harrasses Defense Distributed

According to an article in The Gaurdian, Wachovia bank ignored evidence that Mexican cartels were laundering billions of dollars through said bank:

“Wachovia’s blatant disregard for our banking laws gave international cocaine cartels a virtual carte blanche to finance their operations,” said Jeffrey Sloman, the federal prosecutor. Yet the total fine was less than 2% of the bank’s $12.3bn profit for 2009. On 24 March 2010, Wells Fargo stock traded at $30.86 – up 1% on the week of the court settlement.

Criminal proceedings were brought against Wachovia, though not against any individual, but the case never came to court. In March 2010, Wachovia settled the biggest action brought under the US bank secrecy act, through the US district court in Miami. Now that the year’s “deferred prosecution” has expired, the bank is in effect in the clear. It paid federal authorities $110m in forfeiture, for allowing transactions later proved to be connected to drug smuggling, and incurred a $50m fine for failing to monitor cash used to ship 22 tons of cocaine.

This comes just a few weeks after we learned that Chase bank cancelled Defense Distributed‘s account based not on illegal activity but because of politics. Here is Cody Wilson’s take on it from a recent interview with The Washington Post:

We’re regarded with suspicion. You might even say that it’s due, right? . . . So I have to file, like, affidavits that I’m not involved in illicit activity and online gambling, and I’m constantly just harassed with extra administrative supervision and stuff — this is while we were at Chase. We did like $18,000 in deposits one month this summer. We were doing business for Chase Bank, and treated more or less like — not resentment, but just like, “Ah, we’re a burden.”

So here we have a law student who runs a non-profit given the 3rd degree to make sure he is not a criminal, and on the other hand the drug cartels are laundering millions if not billions through Wachovia without raising much suspicion. Yep, everything seems to be working as planned.

, , , , , , ,

No Comments

Los Zetas Kingpin Captured

From PBS:

“The Zetas were involved in 20 different criminal activities,” George Grayson, an expert on the Zetas and professor of government at the College of William & Mary, said. “Extortion, smuggling, torture, possible harvesting of human body parts. You name it, the Zetas did it.”

, , , ,

No Comments

Invasion of the Drug Cartels

Info-graphic of the increasing influence of Mexican cartels in the United States. Click image to view full size.

cartels

, , ,

No Comments

Mexican Towns Arm Themselves and Crime Plumets

, , , , ,

No Comments

President Lies About Gun Violence in Mexico

From Real Clear Politics:

“Most of the guns used to commit violence here in Mexico come from the United States,” President Obama said during a speech at Mexico’s Anthropology Museum

The weapons the cartels are using: RPGs, M-60s, fully automatic AKs and ARs, are not coming from the United States Mr. President.

, , , , , ,

No Comments

Mexico’s Drug War: Balkanization Leads to Regional Challenges

Mexico’s Drug War: Balkanization Leads to Regional Challenges is republished with permission of Stratfor.”

Editor’s Note: This Security Weekly assesses the most significant cartel-related developments of the first quarter of 2013 and provides updated profiles of Mexico’s powerful criminal cartels, as well as a forecast for the rest of this year. It’s the executive summary of a more detailed report available to clients of our Mexico Security Monitor service.

By Tristan Reed
Tactical Analyst

Balkanization of Cartels

Since the late 1980s demise of the Guadalajara cartel, which controlled drug trade routes into the United States through most of Mexico, Mexican cartels have followed a trend of fracturing into more geographically compact, regional crime networks. This trend, which we are referring to as “Balkanization,” has continued for more than two decades and has impacted all of the major cartel groups in Mexico. Indeed the Sinaloa Federation lost significant assets when the organizations run by Beltran Leyva and Ignacio Coronel split away from it. Los Zetas, currently the other most powerful cartel in Mexico, was formed when it split off from the Gulf cartel in 2010. Still these two organizations have fought hard to resist the trend of fracturing and have been able to grow despite being affected by it. This led to the polarized dynamic observed in 2011 when these two dominant Mexican cartels effectively split Mexican organized crime in two, with one group composed of Los Zetas and its allies and the other composed of the Sinaloa Federation and its allies.

This trend toward polarization has since been reversed, however, as Balkanization has led to rising regional challenges to both organizations since 2012. Most notable among these is the split between the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion and the Sinaloa Federation. The Sinaloa Federation continues to struggle with regional crime groups for control in western Chihuahua state, northern Sinaloa state, Jalisco state and northern Sonora state. Similarly, Los Zetas saw several regional challengers in 2012. Two regional groups saw sharp increases in their operational capabilities during 2012 and through the first quarter of 2013. These were the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion and the Knights Templar. Read the rest of this entry »

, , , ,

No Comments

Mexican Citizens Take Back Town

From The Daily Mail:

The 1,500-strong force has also set up improvised checkpoints on the major road running through Tierra Colorado, which connects the capital Mexico City to Acapulco, a coastal city popular with tourists less than 40 miles away.

, ,

No Comments

MS-13 and Los Zetas Join Forces

From DangerRoom:

Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, became El Salvador’s deadliest gang through force of numbers and the power of the handgun — while inking some pretty crazy tattoos. Now if they weren’t deadly enough, the gang is transitioning into adopting heavier weapons while teaming up with Mexico’s Zetas.

, , , , ,

No Comments

8 Murdered In Monterrey

From Borderland Beat:

Unofficially, the dead were identified in the news report as Alfredo Flores, 34, owner of the business, Juana Maria Villegas, 32, José Alfredo Flores Villegas, 15 and  Osiris Michelle Flores Villegas, 8.  Two other unidentified male victims were killed, and a seventh victim was wounded and taken for medical attention.

, , , ,

No Comments

Mexico’s Drug War: Persisting Violence and a New President

Mexico’s Drug War: Persisting Violence and a New President is republished with permission of Stratfor.”

Editor’s Note: This week’s Security Weekly summarizes our annual Mexico drug cartel report, in which we assess the most significant developments of 2012 and provide updated profiles of the country’s powerful criminal cartels as well as a forecast for 2013. The report is a product of the coverage we maintain through our Mexico Security Memo, quarterly updates and other analyses that we produce throughout the year as part of the Mexico Security Monitor service.

In 2013, violence in Mexico likely will remain a significant threat nationwide to bystanders, law enforcement, military and local businesses. Overall levels of violence decreased during 2011, but cartel operations and competition continued to afflict several regions of Mexico throughout 2012. These dangers combined with continued fracturing among cartels, such as Los Zetas, could cause overall violence to increase this year.

A New President

2013 will be the first full year in office for Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto, who campaigned on promises to stem cartel violence. The most significant of his initiatives is his plan to consolidate and restructure federal law enforcement in Mexico. Pena Nieto’s ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party has introduced legislation that would switch oversight of the federal police, among other entities, away from the Public Security Secretariat to the Interior Ministry. The president also announced plans to bring the state police from each of Mexico’s 31 states under a unified federal command. Pena Nieto has frequently stated his plans to create a national gendarmerie that would serve as a supplemental paramilitary force for tackling violent organized criminal groups. During a Dec. 17 conference, he announced that this new organization initially would have 10,000 personnel trained by the Mexican army. Read the rest of this entry »

, , , , ,

No Comments

HSBC Bank Admits to Anti-Money Laundering and Sanctions Violations, Forfeits $1.256 Billion

From FBI:

HSBC Holdings plc (HSBC Group)—a United Kingdom corporation headquartered in London—and HSBC Bank USA N.A. (HSBC Bank USA) (together, HSBC)—a federally chartered banking corporation headquartered in McLean, Virginia—have agreed to forfeit $1.256 billion and enter into a deferred prosecution agreement with the Justice Department for HSBC’s violations of the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA), the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) and the Trading with the Enemy Act (TWEA).

, , , ,

No Comments

Infographic from Borderland Beat

Borderland Beat

Disclaimer: there is some misinformation in the graphic.

, , , ,

No Comments

Neighborhood Watch on the Border

, , , , ,

No Comments

Mexico’s Plan to Create a Paramilitary Force

Report by STRATFOR:

By Scott Stewart

Institutional Revolutionary Party presidential candidate Enrique Pena Nieto, the front-runner in the lead-up to Mexico’s presidential election in July, told Reuters last week that if elected, he would seek to increase the size of the current Mexican federal police force. Pena Nieto also expressed a desire to create a new national gendarmerie, or paramilitary police force, to use in place of the Mexican army and Marine troops currently deployed to combat the heavily armed criminal cartels in Mexico’s most violent hot spots. According to Pena Nieto, the new gendarmerie force would comprise some 40,000 agents.

As Stratfor has previously noted, soldiers are not optimal for law enforcement functions. The use of the military in this manner has produced accusations of human rights abuses and has brought criticism and political pressure on the administration of President Felipe Calderon. However, while the Calderon administration greatly increased the use of the military in the drug war, it was not the first administration in Mexico to deploy the military in this manner. Even former President Vicente Fox, who declared war on the cartels in 2001, was not the first to use the military in this manner. For many decades now, the Mexican government has used the military in counternarcotics operations, and the Mexican military has been used periodically to combat criminals and bandits in Mexico’s wild and expansive north for well over a century.

In recent years, Mexico has had very little choice but to use the military against the cartels due to the violent nature of the cartels themselves and the rampant corruption in many municipal and state police forces. The creation of a new paramilitary police force would provide the Mexican government with a new option, allowing it to remove the military from law enforcement functions. But such a plan would be very expensive and would require the consent of both houses of the Mexican Congress, which could pose political obstacles. But perhaps the most difficult task will be creating a new police force not susceptible to the corruption that historically has plagued Mexican law enforcement agencies. Read the rest of this entry »

, , , , ,

No Comments

Four Killed in Drug Violence in Western Mexico

From: Borderland Beat

Suspected drug cartel enforcers killed four men and hung two of the victims’ bodies from a bridge in the western Mexican state of Michoacan, prosecutors said.

The state Attorney General’s Office said all four of the victims, none of whom were identified, bore signs of torture.

Two of the bodies were hung Friday afternoon from a bridge that spans a highway near the town of Vista Hermosa, not far from Michoacan’s border with Jalisco state.

Another victim whose throat had been slit was found dumped under the same bridge, while the fourth body was discovered floating in a river near the highway, prompting authorities to suspect a connection between the four homicides.

more

, , , , , , ,

No Comments