The Drug Money Maze

Tax-free money, even $100 billion worth, can be a problem when it is generated by drug deals, bundled in bills of small denomi nations, laced with minuscule traces of cocaine and lying around one's house in suitcases. Each year, the world's leading drug cartels gener ate upwards ofthat amount in $5, $10 and $20 transactions around the world, the vast majority of which take place in the streets and ghettos of America's major cities. U.S. law enforcement officials and drug experts calculate the annual revenues from cocaine trafficking to be $29 billion a year in the United States alone. This drug money is the lifeblood of cartels, necessary for the operation and growth of their vast black market. It is used to pay their private armies and assure the complacency, if not outright complicity, of the nations that shelter them. With illicit profits politicians, judges, police and journalists are regularly bought or silenced by hired assassins. But cash presents a fundamental problem. It is heavy and unwieldy. In $100 denominations, cash is three times the weight of the drugs that generate it; 450 paper bills weigh one pound. In the more common street-level denominations of $10 and $20 bills, it is at least 15 to 30 times the weight of its equivalent value in cocaine. To move cash around the world in the quantities and with the speed demanded by the operations of the major cartels is therefore difficult, if not impossible

Economics · Crime, Illicit Activities, and Governance · Psychology

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