Drug Mules and Bankers

[Ian Walker]

A good article in the Scottish daily record.
PERHAPS Michaella McCollum and Melissa Reid are just naive, foolhardy youngsters who got in over their heads.

Or maybe they really were kidnapped by Colombian gangsters on the island of Ibiza and forced to travel to Peru to become drug mules.

Whatever the truth, Peruvian authorities say that the British women’s case is unlikely to come to trial for at least three years. If they are found guilty, they face the prospect of spending up to 15 years in jail.

The pair stand accused of trying to smuggle 11kg of cocaine on to a plane bound for Madrid.

Smuggling drugs into the EU is the riskiest part of the cocaine business, which is why it is also the most lucrative.

It accounts for the largest part of the 15,800 per cent mark-up on a gram of cocaine between the laboratory in Peru, Bolivia or Colombia and its retail sale in the UK.

By way of comparison, the difference in the price of coffee beans between source and sale is just 223 per cent.

The arrest of British drugs mules might make headlines but it makes little difference to the traffickers. In 2007, the Home Office conducted a survey of drugs traffickers in UK jails. One estimated that one in four of his mules didn’t get through Customs.

Yet, despite losing a quarter of his merchandise, he was still able to keep a healthy balance sheet.

You might think that being behind bars would be proof enough that crime doesn’t pay. But most of those who took part in the survey believed the risk of arrest to be low and the threat of prison “not a serious deterrent”.

Such is the profit margin on illegal drugs, the United Nations say that Customs officers around the world would have to intercept 75 per cent of the cocaine produced to have a serious impact on the drugs business.

Despite years of well-publicised interventions, current efforts are thought to intercept no more than 40 per cent of cocaine shipments. Europeans consume about 124 tons of cocaine every year.

Most of it enters the EU hidden in shipping containers but 30 tons are thought to come in via mules on commercial flights.

While big traffickers have the funds to bribe their way through ports, the small fry don’t.

This is why they need mules, who are usually gullible, greedy, or desperate. And, maybe, terrorised.

Despite the risks they run, drug mules rarely see much of the profits. They certainly don’t get a 20 per cent cut, which seems to be the going rate for laundering drug money.

Of course, bankers don’t like to use such terms, preferring to call them “speciality services”. But their skill in making dirty money clean is an essential part of the drugs trade.

In December 2012, HSBC were forced to admit they had laundered billions of dollars for Mexican and Colombian drugs cartels. It was the biggest drug money laundering case ever heard in an American court.

Yet the official response was far from tough. The US Department of Justice fined the bank $1.9billion – about £1.2billion – which equates to five weeks’ profit.

Nobody from HSBC went to jail. Why? Because the DoJ were worried that anything more than a slap on the wrist might undermine one of the pillars of the world economy.

One of the many ironies of drug prohibition is that despite the well-publicised arrests of small-time mules and dealers, the bigger fish always seem to get away. That’s because prohibition has made the trade in what are basically cheap crops eye-wateringly profitable.

And despite all the rhetoric about fighting a war on drugs, the profits from the trade come in handy when profits from legal businesses dry up.

Antonio Maria Costa, former head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, has said that when the financial crisis hit in 2008, the proceeds of organised crime were “the only liquid investment capital” available to some banks.

As a result, most of the £216billion of profits generated by the global drugs trade that year was absorbed into the legal economy.

Whether McCollum and Reid are victims of coercion or willing participants in a smuggling racket, their story is set to generate more headlines than the bankers’ complicity in the trade ever did. And that really is a scandal.
Tom Feiling is the author of Candy Machine How Cocaine Took Over The World

[Louis the Amigo]

Hi shipmates, The City of london takes in dirty money puts it in the washing machine{system computors} and it come out fresh and clean, the Drugs wars money from MEXICO was done there and the greedy bankers have got away free and clean its killed over 50,000 people, Giving large donations to the right government party in the U.K. can make you very rich and escape justice.

[John Pruden]

why did they just go to customs or police at peru? i think they knew exactly what they were doing and they will pay the price for it{and so they should be}. just my view jp

[robpage]

I listen a lot t World Service BBC discussions when I cannot sleep , there was the Police Chief from a major Spanish tourist resort on a few nights ago , these girls get paid 8000 Euro's a trip , he was saying they catch a lot of them , and in his opinion there is no need to force anyone as there are a lot of locals willing to take the chance at that kind of money , I just do not believe them , they did the crime in my eyes and the rest is a discharge from El Toro's rear end

[Louis the Amigo]

Hi shipmates, ref Drug mules, illegals and crooks poor persons' or daft stupid people, who want to make a fast buck, Big easy small money can be made for all but? the real crooks getaway with it . see previous post

[Des Taff Jenkins]

Hi All.
As with cigarettes it is not compulsory to take cocaine, and the majority of people who make these huge profits possible are mainly people like you and me, but maybe we have more sense than to waste our hard earned on rubbish, a different era a different type of person, today's cocaine user maybe tomorrows dying with a different cancer to end their life.
Cheers Des

redc.gif

[robpage]

Like many here I have been traveling by air for over forty years , they had ample opportunity in Spain and Peru to go secretly to the Authorities , Check in . Security . Passport control . The wandering armed policeman . I do not have a problem with the Asian approach of terminating drug smugglers , and I really do not believe the girls story is even credible

[Ian Walker]

What about the bankers then Rob?

[robpage]

if they are fuelling the drug trade b money laundering , then they should be treated the same as the mules , I have seen so many ex and current drug takers with personality defects , and psychosis , the misery and destruction spread by the dealers , and their bankers and mules deserves the harshest punishments , I would love to see zero tolerance here . we are too soft on these people

[cappy]

I suppose the new x ray machines in airports will spot the ones carrying drugs internally...which should stop some of this evil trade