This one really shocked me...but...the again. Imagine when the credit crunch hit? And the Wall Street crisis with Lehman Bros? It now turns out that trillions of dollars was removed from drug money and other nefarious dealings and p-loughed into these struggling banks to provide much needed liquidity! Who said you can't profit from crime? Isn't this just anoither way to see these bankers? They are in this scenario just one step away from gangsters themselves when they willingly take money that has been created through crime, murders, hijackings?
"Drugs money worth billions of dollars kept the financial system afloat at the height of the global crisis, the United Nations' drugs and crime tsar has told the Observer. Antonio Maria Costa, head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, said he has seen evidence that the proceeds of organised crime were "the only liquid investment capital" available to some banks on the brink of collapse last year. He said that a majority of the $352bn (£216bn) of drugs profits was absorbed into the economic system as a result."
$352bn went into these kinds of institutions which is shocking to say the least. What is going on in the world nowadays when this kind of thing can happen and nobody knows about it or really cares? That phrase "money is the root of all evil" as it says in the bible is really starting to have a meaning these days!
"That was the moment [last year] when the system was basically paralysed because of the unwillingness of banks to lend money to one another."
I can see it now - all those drug barons seeing a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to not only launder their money, but for free and at the normal, criminal rates of exchange (as opposed to say, 0.40 cents on the US$) This money went straight back into organising more shipments to places were drugs were in demand.
The drug baron who offered this information said, "the money is now a part of the official system and had been effectively laundered."
