> While the involvement of Chinese money-laundering rings in handling drug proceeds from Mexico is nothing new, a number of recent court cases in the United States have revealed crucial information about how these schemes work ... weekly pick-ups from representatives of Mexican criminal groups, made in cash ranging between $150,000 and $1 million, with an average of $500,000. These were made in large cities including Chicago, New York and Atlanta ... network of Chinese-owned businesses in the United States and Mexico ... transfer a correspondent amount of money through Chinese banking apps. This happened entirely through the Asian country’s domestic banking system ... “It’s the most sophisticated form of money laundering that’s ever existed,” one of the US sources told Reuters.
This is also literally one of the most complex, relationship-based, and opaque to outsiders communities on the planet. Try to wrap your head around the unimaginable clout and favor calling that this took to develop. "Exclusive" is an understatement. Nobody has free access to something like this.
It's basically the Chinese version of hawala except with drug dealers. A number of ethnicities have developed informal value transfer systems. Pretty sure it's well documented that everyday Argentinians use systems like this for getting money out of Argentina.
After reading the article it's still not clear to me what's meant by "transfer a correspondent amount of money through Chinese banking apps".
Jane picks up 500K in cash in Chicago and then transfers 450K from her business in China, to Joe's business in China. Joe then transfers 400K from his US account to Juan's account in the US.
> While the involvement of Chinese money-laundering rings in handling drug proceeds from Mexico is nothing new, a number of recent court cases in the United States have revealed crucial information about how these schemes work ... weekly pick-ups from representatives of Mexican criminal groups, made in cash ranging between $150,000 and $1 million, with an average of $500,000. These were made in large cities including Chicago, New York and Atlanta ... network of Chinese-owned businesses in the United States and Mexico ... transfer a correspondent amount of money through Chinese banking apps. This happened entirely through the Asian country’s domestic banking system ... “It’s the most sophisticated form of money laundering that’s ever existed,” one of the US sources told Reuters.