Wonder who launders all that money...... Good thing its illegal.
That keeps prices up and makes obscene profits for lots of U.S.
and offshore banks. They've all got to have a hand in this.
Until recently, the international drug trade was as large a
business as the international oil trade.
Banks can't compete or stay in business with others if they
don't also get a piece of this business.
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"Narcotics: Second to Oil and the Arms Trade
The revenues generated from the CIA sponsored Afghan drug trade
are sizeable. The Afghan trade in opiates constitutes a large
share of the worldwide annual turnover of narcotics, which was
estimated by the United Nations to be of the order of $400-500
billion. (Douglas Keh, Drug Money in a Changing World, Technical
document No. 4, 1998, Vienna UNDCP, p. 4. See also United
Nations Drug Control Program, Report of the International
Narcotics Control Board for 1999, E/INCB/1999/1 United Nations,
Vienna 1999, p. 49-51, and Richard Lapper, UN Fears Growth of
Heroin Trade, Financial Times, 24 February 2000). At the time
these UN figures were first brought out (1994), the (estimated)
global trade in drugs was of the same order of magnitude as the
global trade in oil.
The IMF estimated global money laundering to be between 590
billion and 1.5 trillion dollars a year, representing 2-5
percent of global GDP. (Asian Banker, 15 August 2003). A large
share of global money laundering as estimated by the IMF is
linked to the trade in narcotics.
Based on recent figures (2003), drug trafficking constitutes
"the third biggest global commodity in cash terms after oil and
the arms trade." (The Independent, 29 February 2004).
Moreover, the above figures including those on money laundering,
confirm that the bulk of the revenues associated with the global
trade in narcotics are not appropriated by terrorist groups and
warlords, as suggested by the UNODC report.
There are powerful business and financial interests behind
narcotics. From this standpoint, geopolitical and military
control over the drug routes is as strategic as oil and oil
pipelines.
However, what distinguishes narcotics from legal commodity trade
is that narcotics constitutes a major source of wealth formation
not only for organised crime but also for the US intelligence
apparatus, which increasingly constitutes a powerful actor in
the spheres of finance and banking.
In turn, the CIA, which protects the drug trade, has developed
complex business and undercover links to major criminal
syndicates involved in the drug trade.
In other words, intelligence agencies and powerful business
syndicates allied with organized crime, are competing for the
strategic control over the heroin routes. The multi-billion
dollar revenues of narcotics are deposited in the Western
banking system. Most of the large international banks together
with their affiliates in the offshore banking havens launder
large amounts of narco-dollars.
This trade can only prosper if the main actors involved in
narcotics have "political friends in high places." Legal and
illegal undertakings are increasingly intertwined, the dividing
line between "businesspeople" and criminals is blurred. In turn,
the relationship among criminals, politicians and members of the
intelligence establishment has tainted the structures of the
state and the role of its institutions.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO404A.html