The recent joint effort between the U.S. and Mexico in the arrest of Sinaloa Cartel head Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman can be seen as a sign of renewed cooperation between investigators in both countries after a yearlong lull.
U.S. investigators are asking some of the nation's largest banks to tighten their policies on accepting cash deposits in an effort to choke off the financial channels of human smugglers.
The U.S. Treasury Department said Friday that, in response to law enforcement concerns, armored car services and other couriers transporting cash between Tijuana, Mexico and San Diego, California must comply with enhanced border declaration requirements.
In internal reviews and an ongoing criminal and regulatory investigation, Citigroup employees and Mexican officials have privately voiced concerns that drug traffickers may have infiltrated Banamex's anti-money laundering department, say sources.
When imagining how dirty money is moved around the country, "think of FedEx," says Joseph Burke, chief of the National Bulk Cash Smuggling Center in Vermont. The center is tasked with tracing the sometimes elaborate path of drug proceeds from point-of-sale to the bank teller's window.
A U.S. program supplementing Mexico’s efforts to clamp down on drug trafficking and money laundering should be extended for years to come, American investigators say.
Armed resistance by militia groups to Mexico's violent drug cartels will complicate the efforts of bankers charged with following anti-money laundering laws, whatever their sympathies, say industry consultants.
Money launderers working on behalf of Mexican cartels have moved southward after a deferred prosecution agreement between Western Union and Arizona gave investigators unprecedented access to remittance data in Northern Mexico, according to Vince Piano.
Plans to attract foreign capital and expertise to Mexico's oil sector could give organized crime groups and corrupt officials an opportunity to layer and integrate dirty money, say industry analysts.
A measure that will impose anti-money laundering program requirements on a broad range of non-bank businesses and professions in Mexico will take effect next month, according to a notice published Friday in the country's official journal.
Without the threat of larger monetary settlements or prosecutions, financial institutions have little economic incentive to seriously enforce their anti-money laundering compliance controls, according to Peter Reuter, a professor in the Department of Criminology at the University of Maryland.
Trade-based schemes and bulk cash smuggling are among the most common tactics used by international money launderers, according to Joseph Gallion, the deputy assistant director of the Financial, Narcotics and Special Operations Division for the Homeland Security Investigations (HSI).
The New Mexico Attorney General's Office has expanded its team of anti-money laundering investigators as a result of a 2010 settlement between the state of Arizona and Western Union, according to the state's top prosecutor.
When the DOJ accused 14 in June of washing Mexican cartel money via a horse racing operation, it signified a rare feat in the drug war: a prosecution built solely on money laundering charges. Despite years of trying to choke the cash networks of Mexicans drug gangs, such cases remain the exception.
Federal examiners have asked at least a dozen banks along the U.S.-Mexico border to file suspicious activity reports even for relatively small transactions deemed only to be "unusual," say compliance professionals.
Mexican cartel members are exploiting mirror accounts in the United States and Mexico to launder money and evade U.S. dollar deposit restrictions, financial regulators said Thursday.
Securities transactions are increasingly being used by South American drug traffickers to launder illicit proceeds, says Manny Muriel, an attaché in the Internal Revenue Service's (IRS) Bogota, Colombia office.
State prosecutors along the U.S.-Mexico border are studying whether drug traffickers are acting as subagents for Mexican banks that front payments on behalf of American money services businesses.
Key features of an anti-money laundering strategy to combat drug trafficking organizations pitched last year by Mexican officials may ultimately be dropped by lawmakers, say industry advisors.
A bill that would classify Mexican drug cartels as terrorist entities could result in more asset freeze orders for banks, say sources.