El Salvador says a brutal gang laundered money through motels, brothels, taxis
Source: Washington Post
El Salvador says a brutal gang laundered money through motels, brothels, taxis
By Sarah Esther Maslin
July 29 at 4:12 PM
SAN SALVADOR The raids began before dawn. A thousand police fanned out across El Salvadors wrinkled landscape, busting down doors at used-car lots, intercepting cross-country buses and surprising customers at a drive-in motel called the Three Aces. Authorities seized dozens of businesses, claiming they belonged to the Mara Salvatrucha, the countrys largest gang.
In an extensive operation Thursday that resulted in 77 arrests, 106 seized vehicles and 34 frozen bank accounts, the Salvadoran government targeted the financial holdings of the gang, exposing the enrichment of its leaders and sending a message to the impoverished rank and file. You should know that your leaders are living differently from the rest of you, said Douglas Meléndez, the attorney general.
Among those captured in Operation Check was Marvin Ramos Quintanilla, an evangelical pastor who authorities say was leading a double life, working as the gangs treasurer and using his religious credentials to enter prisons and coordinate homicides, extortion and money-laundering operations with gang members.
This country of 6.3 million people has the highest murder rate in the hemisphere, due to the bloody feuding between its gangs and the security forces.
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/el-salvador-says-a-brutal-gang-laundered-money-through-motels-brothels-taxis/2016/07/29/f57c8838-54fe-11e6-b652-315ae5d4d4dd_story.html
[center]
Marvin Ramos Quintanilla,
evangelical minister/gang treasurer [/center]