U.S. Agents Helped Mexican and Colombian Drug Traffickers Launder Millions, Report Says

Fox News

MEXICO CITY – Mexico's government allowed a group of undercover U.S. anti-drug agents and their Colombian informant to launder millions in cash for a powerful Mexican drug trafficker and his Colombian cocaine supplier, according to documents made public Monday.

The Mexican magazine Emeequis published portions of documents that describe how Drug Enforcement Administration agents, a Colombian trafficker-turned-informant and Mexican federal police officers in 2007 infiltrated the Beltran Leyva drug cartel and a cell of money launderers for Colombia's Valle del Norte cartel in Mexico.

The group of officials conducted at least 15 wire transfers to banks in the United States, Canada and China and smuggled and laundered about $2.5 million in the United States. They lost track of much of that money.

In his testimony, the DEA agent in charge of the operation says DEA agents posing as pilots flew at least one shipment of cocaine from Ecuador to Madrid through a Dallas airport.

The documents are part of an extradition order against Harold Mauricio Poveda-Ortega, a Colombian arrested in Mexico in 2010 on charges of supplying cocaine to Arturo Beltran Leyva. A year earlier, Beltran Leyva was killed in a shootout with Mexican marines in the city of Cuernavaca, south of Mexico City.

The documents show Mexico approved Poveda-Ortega's extradition to the United States in May, but neither Mexican nor U.S. authorities would confirm whether he has been extradited.

U.S. and Mexican officials did not respond to requests for comment...[Full Article]

Labels: DEA, drug cartel, Drug Enforcement Administration, drug traffickers, Mexico

D.E.A. Launders Mexican Profits of Drug Cartels

WASHINGTON — Undercover American narcotics agents have laundered or smuggled millions of dollars in drug proceeds as part of Washington’s expanding role in Mexico’s fight against drug cartels, according to current and former federal law enforcement officials.

The agents, primarily with the Drug Enforcement Administration, have handled shipments of hundreds of thousands of dollars in illegal cash across borders, those officials said, to identify how criminal organizations move their money, where they keep their assets and, most important, who their leaders are.

They said agents had deposited the drug proceeds in accounts designated by traffickers, or in shell accounts set up by agents...[Full Article]

Labels: DEA, drug cartel, Drug Enforcement Administration, money laundering

Mexicans Stage Drug Raids Inside the U.S.

Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
August 27, 2011

The Obama administration allows Mexican police to stage drug raids from within the United States, according to the New York Times.

Mexican military commandos have “discreetly traveled to the United States, assembled at designated areas and dispatched helicopter missions back across the border aimed at suspected drug traffickers.” The DEA is providing logistical support and sharing intelligence.

The Times describes the “boomerang” operations as part of a broadening American campaign aimed at the drug cartels. The strategy is based on earlier operations when the Mexican police worked with the U.S. military and raids were staged at Camp Pendleton in San Diego. A DEA official characterized the Mexican paramilitary police as a “rapid-reaction force.”

In response, the Tijuana Cartel kidnapped, tortured and killed a counternarcotics official in the Mexican attorney general’s office, along with two fellow drug agents.

The DEA works closely with the CIA and the Pentagon in the supposed war on the Mexican drug cartels. In addition to flying Global Hawk missions over Mexico, the CIA mans an “intelligence outpost” on a Mexican military base. Mexican officials told the Times Pentagon is not involved in the cross-border operations and Americans do not take part in drug raids on Mexican territory.

The Pentagon used the war on drugs to establish a military presence in Colombia. In 2009, it was reported that seven new bases in the South American country are used to expand the U.S. military’s counter-narcotic operations in the region, deepen involvement in Colombia’s counterinsurgency war, and combat “other international crimes,” according to Colombia’s Foreign Minister.

The Pentagon is busy merging the war on terror with the war on drugs. It is “overhauling the parts of the military responsible for the drug fight, paying particular attention to some lessons of nearly a decade of counterterrorism operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. At Northern Command — the military’s Colorado Springs headquarters responsible for North American operations — several top officers with years of experience in fighting Al Qaeda and affiliated groups are poring over intelligence about Mexican drug networks.”

“The military is trying to take what it did in Afghanistan and do the same in Mexico,” an officer told the Times.

In 2010, the U.S. military admitted it has has turned a blind eye to Afghan opium cultivation and production. “The Golden Crescent drug trade, launched by the CIA in the early 1980s, continues to be protected by US intelligence, in liaison with NATO occupation forces and the British military,” writes author Michel Chossudovsky. “The proceeds of this lucrative multimillion dollar contraband are deposited in Western banks. Almost the totality of revenues accrue to corporate interests and criminal syndicates outside Afghanistan.”

Last year it was discovered that two large U.S. banks, Wachovia and Bank of America, were involved in money laundering cartel drug money. Wachovia had laundered $378.4 billion, a sum equal to one-third of Mexico’s gross domestic product.

The seizure by the Mexican government of a plane laden with cocaine at Ciudad del Carmen in 2006 revealed the banks worked closely with the Sinaloa drug cartel.

Earlier this month, Jesus Vicente “El Vicente” Lambada-Niebla, who was arrested by the Mexican military in 2009 and extradited to the U.S. for trial on federal drug-trafficking charges, revealed that the Sinaloa Cartel worked with the U.S. government to ship drugs into the United States. Officials reportedly allowed the cartel to obtain weapons inside the United States.

The weapons were provided under Operation Fast & Furious. The effort to arm the cartels – responsible for tens of thousands of murders – was supported by officials in the Obama administration.

Labels: Central Intelligence Agency, CIA, DEA, Drug Enforcement Administration, drug raids, Mexico

WikiLeaks: DEA reach goes global, and beyond drugs

RawStory.com

WASHINGTON — The US Drug Enforcement Administration has grown into a global intelligence organization whose reach extends far beyond international drug trafficking, The New York Times reported.

Citing documents from the secrets website WikiLeaks, the newspaper said the DEA's operations had become so expansive the agency has had to fend off foreign politicians who want to use it against their political enemies...

[Full Article]


Cables Portray Expanded Reach of Drug Agency

NYTimes.com

WASHINGTON — The Drug Enforcement Administration has been transformed into a global intelligence organization with a reach that extends far beyond narcotics, and an eavesdropping operation so expansive it has to fend off foreign politicians who want to use it against their political enemies, according to secret diplomatic cables...

[Full Article]

Labels: DEA, Drug Enforcement Administration, intelligence