Wednesday, December 23, 2009

U.S. drug cartel crackdown misses the money

Every day, criminals shove proceeds from U.S. drug sales in their shoes, tape it to their torsos, stash it under dashboards — or just wire it electronically to Mexico. It all adds up to $25 billion a year. A highly touted U.S. Treasury Department program aimed at starving Mexican drug cartels of that cash is currently blocking just $3 million, an Associated Press investigation has found. That's in addition to $58 million seized under a new initiative at the U.S.-Mexico border. The figures suggest that $99.75 of every $100 the cartels ship south is getting through — money that is fueling a brutal war that has killed 14,000 people in three years...read more

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