Fausta's Blog

American and Latin American Politics, Society, and Culture

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Panama: How Panama’s Criminal Landscape Has Changed Since the Days of Narco-Dictator Noriega

Geographic location, secretive banking sector, and a contraband trade hub ensure Panama’s place in the drug trade.

InSight Crime reports on How Panama’s Criminal Landscape Has Changed Since the Days of Narco-Dictator Noriega

Deceased Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega was said to have turned his country into one of the most emblematic examples of a “narco-state” in Latin American history, and his dealings with Colombia‘s biggest drug bosses laid the groundwork for Panama‘s role in the global drug trade for decades after his 1989 arrest by US troops. We explore why Panama remains a drug trafficking haven for the successors of the Colombian criminals that Noriega helped make rich.

Notorious former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega died in a Panama City hospital on May 29 due to health complications. The 83-year-old former strongman had been under house arrest in his native country after serving time in both the United States and France on drug-related charges.

Read the whole thing.

Jon Lee Anderson writes on Manuel Noriega, a Thug of a Different Era

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Mexico: Ríodoce’s Javier Valdez killed in mob hit

Mexican journalist Javier Valdez, known for his award-winning coverage of the drug trade, has been shot dead.

Valdez was shot dead on the street near the premises of the Mexican news weekly he had founded, Ríodoce.

During his career spanning nearly three decades, Valdez wrote extensively on drug-trafficking and organised crime in Mexico, including the powerful Sinaloa drug cartel.

The cartel is believed to be responsible for an estimated 25% of all illegal drugs that enter the US via Mexico.

Valdez is the sixth Mexican journalist killed this year.

Ríodoce vows to continue.

“We were hit in the heart today: Ríodoce”

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Mexico: Cartel war at the U.S. border

While Mexico slams Texas’s new “sanctuary city” law, rival factions of the Gulf Cartel are fighting over control of the border state of Tamaulipas.

Cartel Chronicles reports:

The fighting took place early Tuesday morning setting off the eighth day of gun battles in this city. Law enforcement officials confirmed to Breitbart Texas that the fighting took place along the Esfuerzo Nacional neighborhood on the city’s western side. The fighting began when three gunmen began to fire at a police convoy fatally injuring one of the officers and striking two others. Police officers fought off the attack and then chased the gunmen who tried to flee the are during a short chase. The fighting led to the shutdown of the highway that connects this border city with the industrial hub of Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, one of the busiest avenues in the city.

During the exchange of gunfire, a taco vendor was struck by a stray bullet and died at the scene. Tamaulipas government officials confirmed the five casualties, as well as the seizure of three rifles and two vehicles used in the firefight. As Breitbart Texas has been reporting, rival factions of the Gulf Cartel have been fighting for control of this border city setting off a series of daily gun battles where convoys of gunmen have been roaming the streets seeking out their rivals.

Last year InSight crime reported that Elites, Organized Crime Share Long History in Tamaulipas, Mexico, one of the country’s “most criminally infested states.”

As you may recall, former state governor Tomás Yarrington was being deported from Italy; he is wanted in Mexico and the U.S. on charges of drug trafficking and money laundering. Another governor facing drug charges in the U.S., Eugenio Hernández Flores, remains on the lam.

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Mexico’s Attorney General: US Authorities Still Haven’t Found “A Single Dollar” of Drug Lord El Chapo

Who do you believe?

On the one hand, US Authorities Still Haven’t Found “A Single Dollar” of Drug Lord El Chapo Guzmán, says Mexico’s Attorney General Raúl Cervantes Andrade,

The ex-leader of the Sinaloa Cartel, Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, did not use the financial system, so thus far, no financial resources have been recovered, Mexican Attorney General Raúl Cervantes Andrade said Wednesday.

“To date US authorities have not found anything pertaining to the assets of el Chapo. We have realized that he did not use the financial system because we have not found any assets; they have not been able to find a single dollar,” the official said.

On the other hand, Jorge Ramos Hernández, a PAN congressman claims the assets total US$16 billion and belong to Mexico.

Clearly the guy from the PRI is not talking with the guy from the PAN.

Meanwhile, Senator Ted Cruz proposes the El Chapo Act, enabling 14 billion dollars worth of assets from El Chapo and other drug lords to fund the border wall.

In fact, in 2014 the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC)

issued a chart identifying 288 companies involved in Guzmán’s money laundering operations that had been blacklisted by OFAC between 2007 and 2014. The Guzman-linked companies, mostly located in Mexico, covered a broad range of areas including real estate, gas stations, construction and trucking companies, and furniture stores.

As I mentioned last month, one of El Chapo’s associates agreed not to contest the forfeiture of nearly $1.4 billion in assets and cash by U.S. authorities, and in 2012 the U.S. Treasury Department put financial sanctions on El Chapo’s wife and son.

Who do you believe?

Cross-posted at WoW! Magazine.

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El Salvador: Drug kingpin Chepe Diablo linked to vice-president

Not to be confused with Mexico’s El Chapo, El Salvador Arrests ‘Chepe Diablo,’ Investigates Ties with Vice President

El Salvador’s Attorney General’s Office arrested José Adán Salazar Umaña, alias “Chepe Diablo,” the alleged leader of the Texis Cartel, the most important drug trafficking and money laundering organization in the country. The arrest raises new questions about the links between Salazar Umaña and powerful politicians in El Salvador, including current Vice President Óscar Ortiz.

Salazar Umaña was arrested at noon on April 4 during a police operation that involved raids on some 50 properties, including hotels, gas stations and shops that either belong to Chepe Diablo or his associates. According to the authorities, the companies were used by the Texis Cartel to evade taxes or launder money that came from illegal activities.

According to InSight Crime’s report, Óscar Ortiz was allegedly laundering money through real estate transactions going back to 2000. Read the full article here.

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Money laundering in Miami: Pure gold!

Miami is unlike any other place in the USA, with stories like this, which go unnoticed by the national media:
Billions in drug dealers’ illegal Amazon gold ‘laundered’ through Miami refinery, feds say.

In brief, a Colombian guy named Juan P. Granda, working as director of operations NTR Metals, allegedly – with two other guys – was buying gold from illegal mines in Peru’s Amazonian rain forest, refining it, selling it, and then wiring the funds back to drug traffickers.

Things get complicated and at least seven countries are involved: Granda was born in Ecuador, is a U.S, citizen, the gold was coming from Peru, but was routed through Bolivia, and

At least one of the companies sending the gold to NTR was financed by a man identified as P.F. in the complaint. According to sources, he is “Peter Ferrari,” whose real name is Pedro Perez Miranda.

Ferrari was acquitted of narcotics money laundering in Peru. But he was later arrested on charges of illegal gold mining and laundering more than $500 million worth of gold.

After the Peruvian crackdown, smuggled gold was transported to Bolivia before it was shipped to NTR in Miami, the complaint said. Last year, Ecuadorean authorities made arrests involving about $400 million in gold from Peru bound for refineries in Miami, including NTR Metals, according to the complaint.

Federal agents said customs records show that NTR also participated in “highly suspicious gold imports” from Colombia, Chile, Guyana and the Caribbean.

How much money are we talking about? The federal prosecutor’s complaint states, “NTR sent billions of dollars in wire payments to Latin America from the United States.”
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Mexico: El Chapo does Manhattan

El País reports on The American ‘cage’ holding the world’s biggest drug lord. ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán awaits trial in solitary confinement inside a New York City correctional facility.

There is a television set in the room where Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán is allowed to exercise for one hour a day, but it is never turned on: his guards, who aren’t allowed to talk to him, can’t decide what he should be allowed to watch. He spends the remaining 23 hours of each day in a small cell with a bed, a table, a chair, a lavatory and a sink. The light is turned on most of the time. The only time he sees daylight is through a small window in the passage between his cell and his exercise room.

Apparently the MCC is “worse than Guantánamo.” Play me the world’s smallest violin,

While El Chapo awaits trial, he is being kept in complete isolation, and can only talk to his lawyers from behind a glass screen. He has no contact with his wife, Emma Coronel, and she in turn is receiving no news about him. He is unaware of the increasingly bloody power struggle taking place within the Sinaloa cartel in the wake of his extradition, or that Mexican actress Kate del Castillo, with whom he wanted to make a movie about his own life, has a new television series.

But El Chapo will have seen the documents relating to his own case: that a police officer in the Mexico border city of Juárez is to give testimony about the bribes paid to release members of the Sinaloa cartel; that another witness will talk about a house used for killings, the walls of which were covered in plastic and where a special drain had to be installed for the blood to be washed down; that his stash of AK-47s was found, and that several leading Colombian cartel leaders will also be testifying.

No tunnel allowed at the Metropolitan Correctional Center.

RELATED:
The Successor to El Chapo: Dámaso López Núñez “El Licenciado”.

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