DRUG SMUGGLERS AND MONEY LAUNDERERSDUTCH TREAT
The Netherlands government still controls foreign-policymatters in the semi-autonomous Dutch Caribbean entities of Aruba and Curaçao.In early May this year, a conference was held in Curaçao, on moneylaundering in Latin America. The sponsors of the gathering included theAssociation of International Bankers of the Netherlands Antilles. Thesebankers have not been consistently rigorous in action against money laundering.In 1989, Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau stated the investigationthat led to prosecution of Bank of Credit Commerce International (BCCI)for irregularities. A BCCI subsidiary, First American Bank Shares of Washington,D.C., was a wholly owned subsidiary itself of the Credit & CommerceAmerican Investments of the Netherlands and of Curaçao. Three yearslater Morganthau had broken some of the bank secrecy in the Netherlandsand in its Antilles dependencies. A former Dutch prosecutor told the Curaçaoconference that drug traffickers had penetrated the government institutionsin Aruba. The conference heard that the powerful Mansur family, whose membersown Marlboro cigarette factories in Aruba and liquor stores, were linkedto money laundering. The U.S. indicted cousins Eric and Alex Mansur forusing Interbank to launder money from Colombian drug sales in the USA.Now the U.S. Justice Department is trying to find what parallel operationsfrom Mexican drug cartels involve Netherlands Antilles entities.
The Aruban Attorney General is always a Dutchnational, the appointment of whom must be approved by the government atThe Hague. New York journalist Lucy Komisar reported on May 29, 1997, thatthe Dutch government helping the U.S. probe the Caribbean connection, soDutch banks will continue to be welcome to operate in New York. Aruba andCuraçao banks do have depositors who are Mexican nationals but sofar we have no details on any of them in terms of money or drug trafficking.But the Colombian-Antilles connection has been firmly established, boththe WASHINGTON TIMES and the WALL STREET JOURNAL have reported. Further,Bogota newspapers in 1996 charged that someone from the Mansur family ofAruba funneled US$500,000 in campaign cash to Colombian President ErnestoSamper through the wife of a Cali cartel boss. Samper denied it vigorously.After such charges, the Mansurs were awarded a monopoly on managing Colombiangambling, but then the government suddenly canceled that monopoly withoutexplanation.
http://duncan.gn.apc.org/bat/Health_Committee_Evidence_1.htm
http://duncan.gn.apc.org/bat/Health_Committee_Evidence_1.htm
# From 1990 onwards, the major means by which the cartels sought to bring funds back to Colombia was by means of smuggling. The principal centre for this activity was Aruba, and the principal product involved was cigarettes. At this time, the three most prominent smuggling agents in Aruba were the Harms family, the Mansur family, and Randolph Habibe. The Harms worked for BAT, while the Mansurs worked for Philip Morris, the manufacturers of Marlboro cigarettes.
# The basic mechanism of money laundering was that US dollars raised from cocaine sales were transferred to Aruba, and used to purchase cigarettes from agents such as the Harms or the Mansurs. The cigarettes were then smuggled into Colombia along traditional routes, and sold in urban black market centres known as Sanandresitos. The proceeds of the black market sales were then transferred to the cocaine producers, as "clean" Colombian pesos. This mechanism, known as peso broking, is the basic means of money laundering associated with cocaine trafficking.
# From 1990 onwards, contraband cigarettes increasingly took over from legal cigarette sales in Colombia, at times constituting 70 to 90 per cent of the market. BAT (and Philip Morris) responded to the situation by massively increasing contraband shipments into Colombia, primarily by way of Aruba. BAT files show that successive illegal operations were planned from the United Kingdom to increase smuggling sales into Colombia. Most of the BAT cigarettes concerned came from Venezuela. Smuggling into Colombia was so important to BAT that when Venezuela threatened to introduce export taxes, BATCo responded with an emergency plan to relocate its factories and equipment to Chile instead.
# By 1992, both the Mansurs and the Harms were under active investigation by American and British law enforcement agencies for involvement in cocaine related money-laundering. Yet in the same year, BAT director Keith Dunt visited Aruba to be briefed by Roy Harms about smuggling, and then invited him to enjoy corporate hospitality at Wimbledon alongside ambassadors and a Foreign Office minister.
# Similar features are present in other major BAT smuggling markets. In Hong Kong, the close involvement of the smuggling trade with Triad gangs has resulted in the murder of a BAT manager and an agent, the prosecution for corruption of the company’s former export manager, and other ex-employees fleeing justice.
# In Asia as in Latin America, smuggling routes used by BAT into Myanmar, Thailand, Afghanistan among others overlap directly with traditional narcotics export routes, in this case from the "Golden Triangle" and "Golden Crescent" regions.