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00:00The drug game is bigger and faster than you imagine.
00:05For more than a decade, Mexican cartels have become drug managers.
00:10And today, their invisible hand indirectly negotiates and coordinates the different gangs
00:15of the continent towards a single objective.
00:19The shadowy sale of narcotics.
00:22The game no longer starts in Mexico, but in South America, specifically here in the vast
00:28fields of Colombia and the jungles of Peru and Bolivia.
00:32These three locations produce the most coca, a crop more precious than gold.
00:37They transport this treasure by secret roads to Ecuador and Venezuela, two key routes for
00:42the drug's destination.
00:44From there, the shipments are sent by aircrafts to Honduras, Nicaragua, Guatemala, El Salvador
00:52and Mexico.
00:53From that moment on, the drugs follow different land and sea routes to the west, center and
00:59east of the United States, the main consumer of the product.
01:04The sophisticated coordination of this entire process meant a business of close to $33 billion
01:11for Mexican cartels in 2018.
01:14Since then, the figure has only increased.
01:17And with so much money on the table, the cartels have ventured into a new game on a global
01:22scale.
01:23Money laundering.
01:24Today, U.S. authorities are overwhelmed trying to track the money coming from the cartels'
01:30illicit businesses.
01:32And every day, they ask the same question over and over again.
01:36How do cartels launder $70 million a day without a trace?
01:46For agents of the Drug Enforcement Administration, tracking money laundering should be a simple
01:51task.
01:52This institution has practically unlimited resources and although its operations are
01:57directed from the United States, its eyes are in every corner of the planet.
02:03Each of its investigations uses the highest technology and has the greatest human talent
02:07to monitor illicit activities.
02:09But none of this is enough when it comes to catching Mexican cartels.
02:14In the past, when a drug lord was captured, the head of a precarious structure that depended
02:19on the leader to operate was cut off.
02:22Nowadays, things have changed drastically.
02:26Especially in Mexico, home to more than 150 organized crime groups.
02:31In 2016, the leader of the Sinaloa cartel, Joaquin Guzman Loera, known also as El Chapo
02:38Guzman, was captured for the third time.
02:42A year later, he was extradited to the United States.
02:46This operation required enormous joint efforts between numerous agencies.
02:51They all believed that this was the coup de grace, the end of the Sinaloa cartel.
02:56But 8 years later, the reality is devastating.
03:00The capture of El Chapo Guzman did not dismantle the cartel.
03:05On the contrary, the benefits of this group have only increased.
03:10This is due to the simple fact that the internal structure of the cartel remains intact and
03:16operational.
03:17From the person in charge of selling and distributing the drug, to those who direct the money laundering
03:22structure, no one stops, and the wheel of crime remains unchanged.
03:28This poses a difficult task for the authorities.
03:32According to data from Science Magazine, organized crime is the 5th largest employer in Mexico
03:38and has managed to attract more than 175,000 Mexicans to the network.
03:44With such a volume of those involved, detecting the path that money follows is equivalent
03:49to finding a needle in a haystack.
03:52The cartels continue to expand, their activities continue to grow, and in the process, they
03:58erase their tracks as if they had never existed.
04:01All of this has forced anti-drug agencies to consider new perspectives.
04:06And in the process, they have discovered a larger problem.
04:10The money that cartels receive no longer depends solely on drugs.
04:16Finding the new origin of the money has not been a linear process for the DEA or the different
04:21institutions of the Mexican government.
04:24The Sinaloa cartel alone has a presence in 17 of the 32 states that make up the Mexican
04:30nation and the analysis of criminal organizations have detected that 75% of this territory has
04:37the presence of some criminal group.
04:39This map provides great freedom for illicit businesses or even for participating in those
04:45that are not even illicit.
04:47If we travel to the state of Michoacán in western Mexico, we will discover the heart
04:53of a multi-million dollar business, avocado production.
04:58Mexico controls 60% of the world production of the so-called green gold.
05:03But in recent years, a criminal group called Los Viagras has confiscated farms from their
05:08peasant owners and has also indiscriminately logged protected forests, all in order to
05:14generate their own crops.
05:16Since then, it is estimated that about 12 criminal groups are competing in this region
05:21to become the main avocado producers.
05:24The interest they show in this product is due not only to its profitability, but also
05:29to the fact that when they sell it, they receive completely clean money that is difficult for
05:35the DAA and local authorities to trace.
05:38This way of operating is very similar to one they apply a little further north, in the
05:43state of Colima or in Zacatecas and Durango, the largest producers of gold, silver, copper,
05:50iron and zinc in the country.
05:52Here, companies have been forced to pay lucrative extortions to the Knights Templars and Los
05:58Zetas cartels since 2013 in exchange for their protection.
06:03But this is not their only way of operating here.
06:06Dozens of mines have been closed by the authorities due to the cartels' illegal mining, who extract
06:12resources from the depths and then send them from the ports to China without the authorities
06:17being able to do anything to stop them or to trace the income that these activities
06:21generate for the cartels.
06:24Another incredible fact that has ridiculed the North American authorities has been the
06:28cartels' sophisticated capacity in the arms trafficking business.
06:32This occurs along the entire borderline, from Baja to California and Sonora to Tamaulipas.
06:40Throughout this trip, there are numerous corridors through which weapons pass from one place
06:44to another without anyone noticing.
06:47There are also powerful networks of front men and small groups that are responsible
06:52for maintaining a constant flow that every year leaves some 298,000 US weapons in the
06:58hands of these traffickers.
07:00However, all these businesses are small compared to the profits that human trafficking, the
07:07cartel's second main business, brings them.
07:10Every year, thousands of people from Central America, but also from Haiti, Cuba, Panama,
07:17Ecuador, Colombia, and Venezuela undertake a kilometric journey to reach the US borders.
07:25The Viacrucis is devastating, but for several years, migrants have encountered a new invisible
07:32border.
07:33The border imposed by the cartels.
07:36In the past, migrants had to choose between venturing into the desert alone or paying
07:42for the help of coyotes who guided them to cross into the United States.
07:46Today, the reality is very different.
07:50In December 2023, about 300,000 immigrants arrived at the US borders, but before getting
07:58there, they had to pay the cartels between $1,500 if they were alone or $10,000 in the
08:05case of large families.
08:07Currently, the cartels operate from their own territory, profiting from the migrants'
08:12desire and reporting profits of close to $10 billion per year, a figure that continues
08:18to increase due to the political, economic, and social instability of the region.
08:24With such a panorama, Mexican cartels have managed to not only diversify, but also to
08:31systemize the use of violence to improve their sources of income each year.
08:36Their ambition seems to have no limits, but different international agencies have managed
08:41to stop them by tracking their banking movements.
08:44Money leaves many trails that can be followed, or at least that is what the DEA thought until
08:50they discover the cartels' powerful money laundering machinery.
08:54To launder about $70 million a day, something more sophisticated than a simple method is
09:01needed.
09:02An entire machinery is required that remains operational 365 days a year, 24 hours a day,
09:09without pauses, without stumbling, perfectly coordinated in each movement until generating
09:15a result that, in the eyes of the experts, is simply invisible.
09:20For decades, the cartels have been perfecting this method, and every time the authorities
09:25discover one of them, others are born, like a virus that takes advantage of the system
09:31and refuses to be exterminated.
09:34Despite this, different organizations against drugs and money laundering at the international
09:39level have detected some of the main sources that cartels have to clean their money, although
09:44that does not mean that they have been able to stop them.
09:48Paradoxically, the first of these does not take us to Mexico, not even to South America,
09:54but to the very heart of the United States.
09:57Here, about 38.5 million Mexicans were counted in 2020, which represents a fertile population
10:05for organized crime to operate in the very home of the agencies that pursue them.
10:10The money laundering they execute in this territory comes from remittances, the money
10:15sent by workers to their families.
10:18In 2022, Forbes magazine reported that Mexico was the second largest recipient of remittances
10:25in the world, only behind India.
10:29A year later, this country received $67 billion in remittances alone.
10:35Most of them were sent through different intermediaries, including U.S. companies and through the international
10:41banking system itself.
10:43The processes were done methodically, without raising alarms, all clean and transparent.
10:50Or maybe not.
10:52The authorities have recorded that Minnesota was one of the states that sent the most remittances
10:56to Mexico, even more than Texas.
10:59However, Minnesota is one of the least inhabited by the Mexican population.
11:05Only 200,000 inhabitants of this nationality live here, and according to researchers' estimates,
11:11each of them would have had to deposit about $2,000 per day to explain the total number
11:16of remittances sent from this location.
11:20Naturally, the figures do not add up.
11:23And this explains why it has been possible to identify that about 7.6% of the remittances
11:29sent to Mexico are linked to money laundering associated with drug trafficking.
11:34These operations meant about $4.4 billion clean dollars from the cartels in 2022 alone.
11:41But despite the finding, the authorities are still unable to stop them.
11:45The cartels send remittances in small amounts to an infinity of Mexican accounts belonging
11:50to housewives, students, and ordinary civilians located in different states of Mexico, something
11:56that greatly hinders their tracking and detection.
12:00This same modest operandi is used in another of the cartels' favorite methods for laundering
12:05money, cryptocurrencies.
12:09The blockchain space has become an anonymous refuge for organized crime.
12:14The United Nations recently published a report indicating that about $25 billion are laundered
12:21by cartels through this route every year.
12:23To do this, they follow a well-defined pattern.
12:27Small amounts of money deposited in several bank accounts belonging to civilians, who
12:32often charge a small commission for it.
12:35Once the money is in the bank, they execute Bitcoin purchase orders, always below $7,500.
12:43Finally, the cryptoassets are sent to an address on the blockchain, and from that moment on,
12:49they disappear forever.
12:51Many measures have been adopted to try to curb the use of the blockchain for money laundering,
12:56but none have been completely effective.
12:59Organized crime invests numerous resources in improving and perfecting systems capable
13:04of violating all the restrictions of banking systems and the national and international
13:09agencies themselves.
13:11Even so, the cartels have begun to feel a bit suffocated by governments and their agencies.
13:17But amid the pressures, they've found a new method.
13:21Chinese laundering.
13:23Tracking money in China has been a maze with no way out for investigators.
13:28In this place, the cartels have numerous partners who use small or medium-sized companies to
13:34launder capital.
13:35Usually, Chinese networks identify owners who are experiencing economic problems in
13:40different parts of the country.
13:42These receive, voluntarily or involuntarily, suitcases with money in amounts that usually
13:48range between $30,000 and $150,000.
13:53These sums are deposited as company income.
13:56Once entered, the money is divided and sent to several commercial accounts, always in
14:01different amounts to avoid suspicions of money laundering.
14:05Finally, each of these accounts buys Mexican pesos on the international market.
14:10From that moment on, the money is clean.
14:14And with it, the cartels can already operate in U.S. banks or anywhere else on the planet.
14:20This business is already being investigated by the Treasury Department, but the work has
14:25been so impeccable and precise that the authorities in charge have no way of preventing it or
14:30even detecting it.
14:32The paths that lead to the end of the labyrinth are becoming narrower and narrower, and when
14:37investigators finally manage to get through it, they hit a wall.
14:42In this way, organized crime has managed to evolve to become a powerful machinery that
14:47not only generates large resources annually, but is capable of laundering $70 million a
14:53day, coming from its different criminal businesses, without leaving the slightest trace.
14:58The drug game has completely changed, and the authorities have not yet managed to learn
15:03the new rules.
15:04Everything seems to indicate that this is just the beginning.
15:08Only time will tell how much longer organized crime will be able to continue evading the
15:13watchful eye of the U.S. authorities.