Narcos use AMLO ‘welfare cards’ to launder money and pay lookouts

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The journalist Carlos Loret de Mola said in his column, Stories of a Reporter, that the social programs that grant benefits through the ‘ Wellness Cards ‘ are being used by organized crime to launder money, this being outside the radar of the Mexican authorities.

Loret said that drug cartels use such cards to make payments to low-ranking criminals, such as the so-called ‘halcones’ lookouts.

And not only that, the LatinUs journalist said that with the facilities provided by the Card and the AMLO government, a business category has emerged that is already known as ” the new billers “, which are tax law firms that deal with to get packages of 200 or 500 “ welfare cards” from the federal administration to be able to launder money with them.

The danger of these cards is that they are distributed by mail and the only thing the user has to do to activate them is to go to the bank and enter a PIN, at most showing an identification. The bank is not obliged to keep copies of the client’s documentation because the account is not opened at the bank branch: they only go to the branch to activate the card. The private banks that help issue them simply arrange with the Federal Treasury, making them undetectable, the journalist wrote .

Loret said that “ individual accounts lead to a much larger account, and that is why they are called Level 2 (L2). They allow monthly deposits of up to 3,000 UDIs (approximately 20 thousand pesos ), and therefore, the money that moves there does not come under the strict supervision of anti-money laundering, anti-evasion mechanisms, etc. That is why the resources become easily untraceable .”

The narco uses these ‘advantages’ to pay the so-called ‘halcones’ lookouts, who are usually young people who, in exchange for 2,000 or 3,000 pesos, dedicate themselves to monitoring an area and reporting to their superiors if they see something strange. Once with your card (which you can process when you sign up for the social program ‘ Youth Building the Future’), the organization can deposit your salary and that money is automatically laundered.

That is why resources become easily untraceable. I had access to the framework contract between the government and a private bank and to two contracts signed with two Mexican banks in particular. In these documents, this condition of flexibility and less supervision can be verified.

Thus, a drug hawk can enroll in the Youth Building the Future program and obtain his card. The “halcones” are usually kids who, in exchange for 2,000 or 3,000 pesos, dedicate themselves to monitoring an area and reporting to their superiors if they see something strange. Once with your card, the organization can deposit your salary and that money is automatically laundered.

That is why people who want to hide money, such as billers “fake receipts”, find in the “welfare cards” an effective mechanism to make ant deposits of cash that go unnoticed by tax and anti-money laundering surveillance. After all, the private secretary of the President, Alejandro Esquer, participated in a similar scheme in his “cash carousel” to make ant deposits, forming several times in the same bank branch.— Mexico City.

Source: vanguardia.com.mx

Mexico Daily Post