DECEMBER 3, 20206:57 AMUPDATED 6 HOURS AGO
Special Report: Burner phones and banking apps: Meet the Chinese 'brokers' laundering Mexican drug money
By Drazen Jorgic
20 MIN READ
GUADALAJARA (Reuters) - Early next year, a Chinese businessman named Gan Xianbing will be sentenced in a Chicago courtroom for laundering just over $530,000 in Mexican cartel drug money.
Gan, 50, was convicted in February of money laundering and operating an unlicensed money-transfer business that whisked cartel cash from U.S. drug sales offshore. Gan has maintained his innocence; his lawyers say he was entrapped by U.S. authorities. The trial garnered few headlines and little of the public fascination reserved for kingpins of powerful narcotics syndicates that U.S. federal prosecutors said Gan served.
Still, U.S. law enforcement officials told Reuters that Chinese “money brokers” such as Gan represent one of the most worrisome new threats in their war on drugs. They say small cells of Chinese criminals have upended the way narcotics cash is laundered and are displacing the Mexican and Colombian money men that have long dominated the trade.
Virtually unheard of a decade ago, these Chinese players are moving vast sums quickly and quietly, authorities said. Their expertise: routing cartel drug profits from the United States to China then on to Mexico with a few clicks of a burner phone and Chinese banking apps – and without the bulky cash ever crossing borders. The launderers pay small Chinese-owned businesses in the United States and Mexico to help them move the funds. Most contact with the banking system happens in China, a veritable black hole for U.S. and Mexican authorities.
More:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mexico-china-cartels-specialreport/special-report-burner-phones-and-banking-apps-meet-the-chinese-brokers-laundering-mexican-drug-money-idUSKBN28D1M4
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