Drug Trafficking

Drug cartels and other criminal groups are increasingly using cryptocurrencies and a growing “gig” workforce of freelance brokers and couriers to launder cash and evade law enforcement, Bloomberg Businessweek reported.

Two U.S. senators reintroduced a bipartisan bill that would subject informal-value transfers and blank checks to anti-financial crime laws and strengthen the hand of prosecutors pursuing money-laundering charges. 

The U.S. Justice Department is increasingly targeting corrupt Mexican money brokers in an attempt to disrupt the financial networks used to launder cartel drug proceeds via cryptocurrency and other means, the Associated Press reported.

A Spanish police corruption investigation has widened into a narcotics and money-laundering scandal that links a senior economic-crimes investigator and a son of the Duke of Seville to an international drug-trafficking ring, The Times reported. 

The European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO) has launched an investigation into suspected customs fraud, corruption and document forgery linked to operations in the Port of Antwerp, alleging a scheme that caused an estimated €11.3 million in lost EU import duties. 

Mexico’s sweeping crackdown on electronic cigarettes is accelerating a shift in the country’s $1.5-billion vape-pen market toward organized crime, according to ABC News.

Spanish National Police, working with Germany’s Bavarian State Criminal Police Office and supported by Europol, arrested 34 people in Spain during an operation against the international criminal organization known as “Black Axe,” Europol announced. 

Amid all of the spectacle that has come with the U.S. capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, federal prosecutors have quietly amended a key claim they leveled against the South American leader last year. They no longer assert that the drug-trafficking organization he allegedly led—“Cartel de los Soles”—really exists. 

U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday vowed to designate Venezuela’s government a “Foreign Terrorist Organization” (FTO) and ordered a “total and complete” blockade of sanctioned oil tankers moving into and out of the country.

The United States is tightening its oversight of the tens of billions of dollars resident and undocumented migrants send home each year through Western Union, MoneyGram, and other money services businesses (MSBs), according to a recent U.S. Treasury Department warning.