cannabisnews.com: U.S. Companies Tangled in Web of Drug Dollars
U.S. Companies Tangled in Web of Drug Dollars
Posted by FoM on October 10, 2000 at 16:28:28 PT
By Lowell Bergman
Source: New York Times
On a rainy day last June, a group of corporate executives gathered in a conference room at the Justice Department for a meeting with Attorney General Janet Reno and other top government officials. The executives represented some of the pillars of corporate America — Hewlett-Packard, Ford Motor Company, Whirlpool. The session was not publicized because those at the meeting shared an unlikely and potentially embarrassing problem: their companies, they feared, were being singled out in the nation's war on drugs, and neither they nor the government was quite sure what to do.
With the intensifying federal crackdown on money laundering, agents had been tracking drug money into the accounts of American corporations and their distributors and dealers. In fact, federal officials said, about $5 billion a year in Colombian drug money is used to buy goods and services — from cigarettes to computer chips — from American companies.What makes that possible is a system known as the black-market peso exchange, a complex money trade that law enforcement officials say has become increasingly important to the Colombian narcotics trade. The system — really a network of currency brokers with offices in New York, Miami, the Caribbean and South America — is essentially an underground money market that lets the traffickers exchange American dollars for Colombian pesos. Those dollars, which stay in the United States, are then bought by Colombian companies that use them to buy American goods for sale back home.But the government's efforts to seize that money have put it on a collision course with corporations, which say they are victims with no way of knowing that they and their distributors are being paid with drug money. As they met on June 6, those executives, lawyers and law enforcement officials found themselves grappling with a conundrum: when does drug money stop being drug money? How far does a company's responsibility go?The questions have been confronting law enforcement officials for years."What are we going to do?" asked Greg Passic, a former drug enforcement agent who now advises the government on the economics of the narcotics industry. "We've got the Fortune 500 involved in our drug- money laundering process." For a long time, because of lax enforcement of United States currency laws, the drug traffickers were able to launder billions of dollars through American financial institutions. A crackdown in the 1980's pushed traffickers to what they saw as a virtually fail-safe system for getting back their profits — the black-market peso exchange.Their growing reliance on that system shows how deeply the drug trade has become entwined in the legitimate economies of the United States, Colombia and other nations.Colombian officials said that as much as 45 percent of their country's imported consumer goods are bought with money laundered through the peso exchange. On the American side, law enforcement officials said the exchange has largely eliminated the trade deficit with Colombia. The market, said the customs commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly, "is the ultimate nexus between crime and commerce, using global trade to mask global money laundering."So far, no large American company has faced criminal charges. And companies have almost always been able to prevent federal officials from keeping money that has been seized.But in the last few years, as frustration has risen, the government has taken a tougher line. There have been Congressional hearings intended to put companies on notice by name. Prosecutors have issued warnings and stepped up efforts to seize laundered money. At the same time, the government has encouraged companies to institute "know your customer" policies similar to those used in the financial industry. The policies gave dealers and distributors techniques for recognizing money laundering. Thus educated, the government thought, the companies would be less able to argue that they simply could not have known.In drawing the line between legitimate and illegitimate profits, the government must not only prove that the money came from drug deals; it must show that the recipient "knew or should have known" its source. In the war on drugs, that line has proved very fuzzy.Trading Dollars for Pesos:Congress passed the first money- laundering laws in the early 1970's — requiring, among other things, that banks report any cash transaction over $10,000 — but the laws were loosely enforced. By 1979, the Federal Reserve Bank in Miami had more cash than the other federal reserve banks combined. It took the uproar over the cocaine epidemic in the early 80's for banks to comply with the law. And with the resulting crackdown, traffickers resorted to the black market, which for decades had provided Colombian businesses with dollars at less than the official exchange rate of 2,000 pesos to the dollar. The rate in Colombia is fixed by the government.One peso broker recently agreed to describe how the system works. The process begins when the broker receives a call from a Colombian drug trafficker or his American representative. The two negotiate an exchange rate for pesos, usually 30 percent to 40 percent below the fixed rate. So $10,000 might be worth 12 million pesos instead of 20 million at the official rate.The dollars are then delivered to the broker, who promises to deliver pesos to the trafficker's bank account after the dollars are sold to Colombian businesses. The dealer's insurance is the broker's knowledge that to do otherwise would almost surely mean death.The broker maintains several runners — "smurfs," in law enforcement lingo — who deposit the cash into hundreds of United States bank accounts in amounts of less than $10,000, to avoid scrutiny. At the same time, the broker's office in Colombia negotiates with business people there who want cheap dollars to buy everything from consumer goods to helicopters.Usually, that exchange rate is 20 percent below market, so a business owner in Colombia might pay 16 million pesos, instead of 20 million pesos at the fixed rate, for $10,000. The pesos are then transferred — in this example, 12 million pesos — to the traffickers' accounts. The broker keeps the difference, 4 million pesos in this instance. Then at the businessman's direction, the dollars in the American banks are used to pay for American goods.The peso brokerage is one part of the process that supplies Colombia with inexpensive goods from the United States and around the world. Colombian authorities said the goods were often smuggled into the country, costing Colombia more than $300 million a year in tax revenue. Colombia has made collecting that lost revenue a priority. But the black market has considerable appeal because it puts a lot of inexpensive foreign goods on the Colombian market.The exchange has also increased American exports to Colombia. "This is positive for U.S. business, there is no doubt about it," said Mike Wald, who runs a consortium of law enforcement agencies in Florida focusing on the peso exchange. "The Colombian, if he pays less for his dollars, can buy more goods. That's a pretty obvious economic fact. But we have to realize where this money originates. It's drug money."Tangled With Drug Money:Two companies that have turned up in the American government's anti-laundering efforts are Phillip Morris and Bell Helicopter Textron. Phillip Morris products in particular have been a major presence in Colombia. Marlboro cigarettes are readily available at prices investigators said indicated that they were bought with black market dollars and smuggled into the country. Earlier this year, Phillip Morris was sued in the Eastern District of New York by the Colombian tax collectors. The federal lawsuit accused the company of being involved in cigarette smuggling and in the laundering of drug proceeds.Phillip Morris has denied the allegations, saying that it did not know its products were being exploited for money laundering. In addition, without admitting wrongdoing, it recently signed an agreement with Colombia, pledging to stop its products from entering the black market or being used to launder money. In 1995, in Federal District Court in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Phillip Morris's former distributors in northern South America were indicted for laundering $40 million in black market pesos.A member of the defense lawyers said the money was used to buy Phillip Morris cigarettes, liquor and other products for the Colombian market. But the defense team member said the defendants did not know that the money came from drug sales.Phillip Morris severed its relationship with the defendants in 1998 and said it did not know that its products were being smuggled or that black market money was used to buy them.In another case, Bell Helicopter is challenging the seizure of $300,000 from its accounts, money, according to court documents, that was generated by drug smuggling.It was part of more than $1 million that the United States believed was supplied a peso-exchange broker to buy a Bell aircraft. The helicopter was seized in Panama at the request of the United States.The case has become a sore point for American law enforcement in part because the helicopter was sold to a Colombian businessman linked to the country's right-wing paramilitaries. Seeking Cooperation:The deepening struggle between prosecutors and business executives is what led to the meeting with Attorney General Reno and other government officials, including Deputy Attorney General Eric H. Holder and Deputy Treasury Secretary Stuart E. Eizenstat. The companies invited were Hewlett-Packard, Ford, General Motors, Sony, Westinghouse, Whirlpool and General Electric Company, Treasury officials said. None of the companies returned phone calls seeking comment, except General Electric and Sony. Sony said it would have no comment. But General Electric's counsel, Scott Gilbert, said his company instituted a strict compliance program five years ago, after reports that its refrigerators were being used in money-laundering operations.As part of its policy, Mr. Gilbert said General Electric warns dealers to be aware of "red flags" — a customer's lack of interest in discounts, an unwillingness to give information about the company, or unusual forms of payment like large amounts of cash or checks written on the account of a third party. The new policy has cut sales of appliances to Latin America by 23,000 units, or over 20 percent, said an executive at General Electric.Alan Dooty, a customs official, said the companies had been selected for the June meeting because their products had shown up in the black market in Colombia. The exception was General Electric, which he singled out as a "good citizen." Before the meeting, some of the companies expressed concern that they would be punished. But once they arrived, Mr. Dooty said, they were assured that the government was seeking cooperation. A follow-up session in July bogged down in legal murk.An industry representative familiar with the meeting said: "The Justice and Treasury Departments realized that they were trying to identify drug money that had morphed, been transformed, in layers of transactions involving distributors, authorized dealers, financing arrangements with unregulated money lenders called `factors' and the other realities of commercial life."More meetings are scheduled for this fall.Note: This article incorporates reporting conducted by the writer for a two-part documentary entitled "Drug Wars," concluding Tuesday night on the PBS program "Frontline." NewsHawk: RyanSource: New York Times (NY)Author: Lowell BergmanPublished: October 10, 2000Copyright: 2000 The New York Times Company Contact: letters nytimes.com Address: 229 West 43rd Street, New York, NY 10036 Fax: (212) 556-3622 Website: http://www.nytimes.com/ Forum: http://forums.nytimes.com/comment/ Related Articles & Web Site:Drug Wars - Frontline PBS Specialhttp://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/drugs Magnetic Pull of Wars http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread7295.shtmlPolitics, Policy and Pot http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread7284.shtmlPBS Drug Wars Chronicles 30 Years http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread7261.shtmlNPR News and PBS Frontline Special Reporthttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread7260.shtmlA Frontline Series in Collaboration with NPRhttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread7230.shtml
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Comment #13 posted by FoM on October 14, 2000 at 08:08:26 PT:
National Public Radio - Drug Wars
Drug-Wars -- NPR RealPlayer http://www.npr.org/news/specials/drugwars/
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Comment #10 posted by FoM on October 11, 2000 at 19:28:19 PT
The Drug War Programs Are Very Educational
Thanks mungojelly,I just finished watching on The History Channel the show on Cocaine. I still don't understand the allure of Cocaine. It must be for people that are younger then me. It wasn't around anywhere that I ever ran into it but one time. The second night of The Frontline Special will be on at 1 pm et on my DSS and I will watch it and tape it too. These programs are very educational.
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Comment #9 posted by mungojelly on October 11, 2000 at 17:39:59 PT:
how far does the corruption go?
This is one of the things I found most interesting in that excellent Frontline documentary that I'm sure many of us watched. Money is morally blind, and when combined with laws prohibiting consentual activities it is a powerful corrupting force. It's difficult to really look at how deep this corruption goes -- we don't want to know about it. I noticed that Frontline looked at how Mexican border officials are bought off with drug money, but not about how the same thing happens with American border officials (though of course we all know that it does). In response to FoM, it is indeed possible to live a healthy and normal live as an opiate addict. There are many stunning examples of this from modern times, mostly doctors who can freely prescribe themselves opiates & therefore do not experience the dangerous effects of black markets and DEA agents. Perhaps more interestingly, before prohibition there were actually many more opiate addicts than there are now -- many of the "Patent Medicines" contained large amounts of morphine -- but we don't hear about the problems that opiates caused our society at that point, because quite simply there weren't any. This is why it is a question of what the criteria of success is for prohibition: it has "succeeded" in reducing the number of people addicted to opiates, but it has also dramatically increased the social and physical damage caused by and to those who do use opiates. All of that is of course fairly irrelevant to marijuana prohibition, as no one has ever been able to create -- no matter how hard they have tried -- a situation where marijuana is on the whole significantly detrimental to health. Prohibition does not increase the risk of THC overdose, because a THC overdose is impossible. Prohibition makes it necessary to inhale marijuana, which causes some minor lung damage, but not enough that marijuana has ever been causually linked to any disease of the lungs. Marijuana is just a safe drug, no matter how you cut it.
mungojelly
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Comment #8 posted by dankhank on October 11, 2000 at 15:27:48 PT:
Better Deal If You Are A Corporation ...
>In drawing the line between legitimate and illegitimate profits, the government must not only prove that the money came from drug deals; it must show that the recipient "knew or should have known" its source. Sounds like they get a sweeter deal than any of us citizens.Cops can take our stuff, and only have to "think" that we got it from drug-related activities. Take our money, cars, boats ...Phillip Morris taking drug money?? It's time to put them assholes out of business ... N'est Pas ...?It's gonna get sticky, now as we head to the end of the repression ...
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Comment #7 posted by FoM on October 11, 2000 at 08:48:01 PT:
Thanks!
Thanks Dave in Florida and Kaptinemo,I really wondered because a person can't take pharmaceutical drugs for years without having some bad health effects. Maybe if the drug is pure it doesn't hurt a person as much. I will check out the links a little later after I'm done looking for the news this morning. Dave I didn't contact Direct TV because they had part one last night which was unbelievable and part 2 tonight! I can't wait and then The History Channel will be doing the show on Cocaine which will help me to learn more about this drug.Peace, FoM!
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Comment #6 posted by kaptinemo on October 11, 2000 at 07:32:37 PT:
The doctor Dave in Florida had mentioned
His name was William Stewart Halstead, and his story can be read here:http://druglibrary.org/schaffer/Library/studies/cu/cu5.htmlThe stories of other prominent addicts, some famous, some infamous (like Senator Joseph McCarthy!) are also included there.Yes, it is possible to live a life close to being normal while addicted; just so long as the State leaves you alone. The fact that it is the State which brings about the circumstances which result in penury, illness, suffering and death lends credence to the old saying about what the road to Hell is paved with.
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Comment #5 posted by Dave in Florida on October 11, 2000 at 05:02:36 PT
Yes you can
FOM said > If the law allowed could an individual live a healthy and productive life addicted to say Morphine?According to Cliff Schaffer, and documents on his web site, yes you could. This happened before the drug laws were passed. The Doctor who started, I believe John Hopkins University, was addicted to cocaine and then morphine for over 40 year, but led a very productive life. Cliff was interviewed in part one of the history channel show. His web site is a must read. http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/index.HTMone particular book to read is the Consumers Union report from 1972 located here: http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/library/studies/cu/cumenu.htmDid you call the DSS people and ask why they did not show the season premere of Frontline?Dave
http://www.druglibrary.org/resolution/index.htm
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Comment #4 posted by kaptinemo on October 11, 2000 at 04:50:32 PT:
The biter gets bit
Friends, did you get this part?In another case, Bell Helicopter is challenging the seizure of $300,000 from its accounts, money, according to court documents, that was generated by drug smuggling.It was part of more than $1 million that the United States believed was supplied a peso-exchange broker to buy a Bell aircraft. The helicopter was seized in Panama at the request of the United States.The case has become a sore point for American law enforcement in part because the helicopter was sold to a Colombian businessman linked to the country's right-wing paramilitaries. Bell Helicopter provides the UH-1 ("Hueys") used by the Colombian government as both transport and gunships in their anti-narco efforts. The company that was hoping to 'make a killing' in the Colombian Civil war by providing air strike capability has been implicated in the money laundering scam. The very evil they loudly trumpet themselves as helping to slay has corrupted them. Even worse, the machine that was bought was meant to be used in the right-wing butcheries being conducted against the campesinos down there.And these companies, which thought to appear so squeaky clean in 'doing their part' (and being handsomely paid in the process) against the 'drug menace' have fallen prey to the very forces of capitalism that they extole. Talk about irony.
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Comment #3 posted by FoM on October 10, 2000 at 22:41:16 PT:
More Questions
I'm watching the History Channel on Opium, Morphine and Heroin and I am perplexed. If the law allowed could an individual live a healthy and productive life addicted to say Morphine? I really don't have any idea. Do narcotics attack any particular organ like the liver? Would a person need to keep increasing the dose or suffer withdrawal? Would that cause a person's health to fail? Is it the same as as an alcoholic? Just wondering and taking in these very educational shows on Frontline and The History Channel. Very deep!
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Comment #2 posted by Occassional Pot User on October 10, 2000 at 19:38:00 PT
EDUCATION
Ok, after watching the History Channel shows and the first part of the PBS show, all I have to say is THIS:People did not understand enough back in the days when 1/3 of China was hooked on opium, etc.Now in the age of the 21st century, we are in the midst of an Information Revolution. Anyone can access any drug information they want, and use drugs responsibly in the privacy of their own home. People can research the pros and cons of cannabis, and use it with a solid base of knowledge about it.If we had more intense and honest education in public schools across the country about illegal drugs, and legal drugs such as alcohol and tobacco, America would be a country of people truly educated on drugs.We need a few things to happen for an optimum society w/ regards to drugs: 1) quality drug education2) legalization of marijuana (which is the most used, and safest of all known recreational drugs)3) end drug testing in corporations
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Comment #1 posted by Ethan Russo, MD on October 10, 2000 at 17:47:09 PT:
Dirty Little Secrets of the War on Drugs
This is amazing stuff, but we suspected as much all along, right? There is a simple, obvious way to end the abuses: If drugs were legal, but controlled and taxed, there would be no huge profits to criminal elements, and the corruption, murders et al. would fall by the wayside, much as occurred in this country once alcohol prohibition was rescinded. Consider this, however. Who stands to profit from the continuation of the War on Drugs? The answers are illuminating. The cartels do, the dealers in the USA do, of course, but who else? Can the Colombian government, their army, the right wing militias, and these American corporations continue with business as usual without these profitsm and the WoD? Can ONDCP? Can the large corporations behind urine drug testing? Can I ask the heretical question as to whether there are, in fact, elements of the American government that depend to maintenance of this international tragedy? Nah, that would be cynical.
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