The Costa Rican Drug Institute (ICD) have detected in Costa Rica the use of gold bars to launder money in the country.
The gold bars are about the size of a cell phone but can hold an incredibly high value and according to ICD they are sent first to the North of Central America, Mexico and of course, the United States where they are used to pay debts or sold to different companies.
These gold bars are even sent through different shipping services, explained Guillermo Araya, director of ICD, in an interview with Channel 7 news.
This method has been used, according to the Department of Justice of the USA, by the Jalisco Cartel to launder more than 100 million dollars.
A recent report by the Miami Herald affirms that “the United States depends on Latin American gold to feed insatiable demand from its jewelry, bullion and electronics industries. But much of the metal comes from outlaw operations controlled by gangsters who use gold to launder their profits from cocaine sales”.
“ By using drug profits to mine and sell gold to American and multinational companies, criminal organizations can launder “staggering amounts of money,” explained John Cassara, a retired U.S. Treasury special agent to the Miami Herald. (https://hrld.us/2PSZItp).
According to Araya, Costa Rican authorities are now training and informing their personnel to be able to detect this type of illegal activity and determine the different modalities that emerge. Illegal mining in Costa Rica is a big problem in the Corcovado National Park and Crucitas, where this activity takes a huge environmental toll.
Much of this gold has been extracted through illegal mining in different regions of Latin America specially in Peru, Colombia and Venezuela.
The gold bars are about the size of a cell phone but can hold an incredibly high value and according to ICD they are sent first to the North of Central America, Mexico and of course, the United States where they are used to pay debts or sold to different companies.
These gold bars are even sent through different shipping services, explained Guillermo Araya, director of ICD, in an interview with Channel 7 news.
This method has been used, according to the Department of Justice of the USA, by the Jalisco Cartel to launder more than 100 million dollars.
A recent report by the Miami Herald affirms that “the United States depends on Latin American gold to feed insatiable demand from its jewelry, bullion and electronics industries. But much of the metal comes from outlaw operations controlled by gangsters who use gold to launder their profits from cocaine sales”.
“ By using drug profits to mine and sell gold to American and multinational companies, criminal organizations can launder “staggering amounts of money,” explained John Cassara, a retired U.S. Treasury special agent to the Miami Herald. (https://hrld.us/2PSZItp).
According to Araya, Costa Rican authorities are now training and informing their personnel to be able to detect this type of illegal activity and determine the different modalities that emerge. Illegal mining in Costa Rica is a big problem in the Corcovado National Park and Crucitas, where this activity takes a huge environmental toll.
Much of this gold has been extracted through illegal mining in different regions of Latin America specially in Peru, Colombia and Venezuela.
