Multi-Billion Dollars profits enable drug traffickers to buy influence and “protection”. Naturally, there are very few banks and businesses willing to accept drug money, but there are also very few which will refuse such money, once it has been sufficiently “laundered” through “dummy” businesses.
Ms Austin Fitts points out some of these laundering techniques, such as motel chains with no guests and fast food franchises with few customers. She also shows how laundered money makes its way into the stock markets of the world. In a previous article, she focuses on the links between Colombia rebels and the New York Stock Exchange.
(Please see her ”ENRON and Global Poverty” in our Economics section.)
She also shows how insider trading can inflate stock prices to a false high price and how insiders then sell their shares, leaving other investors to take the loss.
Money begets more money which begets power and influence. Ms Austin Fitts also explains – in great detail - how ilegal drug profits are invested in legitimate businesses to produce even greater profits and influence for the drug merchants. These “clean” profits can then be openly used for “respectable” reasons.
Ms Austin Fitts points out some of these laundering techniques, such as motel chains with no guests and fast food franchises with few customers. She also shows how laundered money makes its way into the stock markets of the world. In a previous article, she focuses on the links between Colombia rebels and the New York Stock Exchange.
(Please see her ”ENRON and Global Poverty” in our Economics section.)
She also shows how insider trading can inflate stock prices to a false high price and how insiders then sell their shares, leaving other investors to take the loss.
Money begets more money which begets power and influence. Ms Austin Fitts also explains – in great detail - how ilegal drug profits are invested in legitimate businesses to produce even greater profits and influence for the drug merchants. These “clean” profits can then be openly used for “respectable” reasons.