Thursday, June 8, 2017

"Narco cash laundered into large-scale agriculture in Central America"

Violent criminals are notoriously conservative in their investing:
"It's a racket. Those stock market guys are crooked."
-Al Capone, attributed
Additionally, the usual tests to determine where on the risk-taking spectrum a violent criminal will land are not really feasible.
For example, if one were to ask the prospective client "As your trusted advisor I have to determine your risk tolerance; wanna cut cards for $1000?"

The would-be advisor is apt to me met with "Give me the thousand. Give me the fucking money or I'll kill you right here".

Which leaves one both down a grand and failing in one's 'Know your Customer' duties.

From Illegal Deforestation Monitor:

Narco cash laundered into large-scale agriculture in Central America
Tuesday, May 16th, 2017
A new study comparing forest loss and cocaine busts supports the theory that drug money is being laundered into large-scale agriculture in Central America.

The study, published this week in Environmental Research Letters, estimates that forest loss linked to narco-trafficking may account for between 15 and 30 per cent of forest loss in Nicaragua, Guatemala and Honduras in the past decade.

While some attention has been given to deforestation specifically for the cultivation of coca, the study tested the theory that some of the US$6 billion in illegal profits are invested in agriculture as a means to launder it into the “legal” economy.

Previous studies have found that traffickers invest in cattle ranching, palm oil plantations and the timber trade. The new study hypothesised that agriculture linked to the drug trade could be distinguished from smallholder farming due to the “high degree of illicit capitalization and related ability to monopolize rural land and labor, yielding anomalously large, remote, and rapid forest clearing”....MORE
HT: Farmlandgrab