China’s strict capital controls have created the perfect market for money laundering efforts — but authorities are catching on.
Chinese renminbi have become a currency of choice for money laundering. Credit: Japanexperterna.se, Creative Commons
Last October, the Justice Department unsealed an indictment in Alexandria, Virginia that charged six individuals with conspiring on American soil to launder $30 million in illicit proceeds for Latin American drug cartels.
According to the authorities, the sophisticated crimes were perpetrated with fake identities, shell companies and a network of brokers who — for a fee — found ways to move the illicit money from the streets of America, where the drugs were sold, to drug trafficking organizations in Latin America.
The draft of the National Defense Authorization Act includes funds allocated for the Department of Treasury to study China’s involvement in money laundering.Credit: U.S. House of Representatives
In a statement released at the time of the announcement, Wendy Woolcock, a special agent at the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (D.E.A.), said the group “went to great lengths to conceal their alleged criminal activities and further schemes that enabled dru
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