‘So, who does gain from the drugs trade?’
October 3rd, 2012The private prison scam is a key component of this as well.
Via: Al Jazeera:
Clearly a small number of criminals make significant sums from the trade. But most people are working for little more than subsistence wages, from the peasants growing coca plants in the Andes or opium poppies in Afghanistan to the dealers on the streets of Western cities. Even those few of the latter who avoid arrest or violent death and rise to the top face the constant danger from law enforcement and from their competitors. Though the drugs trade has become a symbol of easy, if immoral, money, much of it is demanding and difficult work, where the penalties for miscalculation are severe.
So, who does gain from the drugs trade? One unambiguous winner is the Western banking sector. In recent years a series of American and British banks, including Wachovia and HSBC, have been caught providing banking services to drug dealers. Bankers don’t move money around for nothing. They receive commissions for the service. And they are only part of a much larger infrastructure of lawyers, company formation agents, accountants and tax advisers who help turn the proceeds of crime into untraceable capital.
The benefits for banks don’t stop there. Antonio Maria Costa, the head of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, told the Observer newspaper that “in many instances, the money from drugs was the only liquid investment capital” that the banks could access during the credit squeeze of 2008. “There were signs,” he said, “that some banks were rescued that way.”
