International banks have aided Mexican drug gangs

latimes ^ | November 27, 2011 | Tracy Wilkinson and Ken Ellingwood

[Rabin]

Reporting from Mexico City— Money launderers for ruthless Mexican drug gangs have long had a formidable ally: international banks... Banking powerhouse Wachovia Corp. last year agreed to pay $160 million in forfeitures and fines after U.S. federal prosecutors accused it of "willfully" overlooking the suspicious character of more than $420 billion in transactions between the bank and Mexican currency-exchange houses — drug money

HSBC Bank, is being monitored by U.S. regulators after a probe last year focused on bulk cash that the bank's U.S. branch received from Mexican exchange houses, money suspected to be drug proceeds....

[Rabin]

Hells bells, Ifen we don support the fargin bastiges, who (besides our big bankers) will?

Rab

[TigerClaws]

Saw this story last month.

Looks like the cartels bailed out the banks.

[MestaMachine]

Drug cartels and banking interests followup. Incestuous evil. Ping.

[Tainan]

The big banks have been in the drug money laundering bidness for decades.
Back in the '80s it was particularly bad.
ScotiaBank. Bank of Nova Scotia, financed dozens of shopping malls across the U.S.A....ALL were set-up to launder cocaine money.
What was the other big name...ICCB...something like that. Drug money laundering.
Nothing new here.

[GOPJ]

Thanks for the ping.

[JustSayNoToNannies]

This is the utterly unsurprising result of drug criminalization policies' channeling inflated profits into criminal hands. Relegalize!