4-10-19 Metalor processed some $3.5 billion worth of gold from the Peru-based firm Minerals del Sur (Minersur) between 2010 and 2018, according to the documents obtained by Ojo-Público. Prosecutors say Minersur sourced suspect ore from at least two companies under investigation for illegal mining, according to the report.
“Metalor was the exclusive importer of gold produced from illegal mining which was sold or sent through Minersur,” states one of the documents in the Ojo-Público investigation, which reproduced an image of that portion of the prosecutor’s report.
Minersur and its owner Fransico Quintano Méndez are under investigation for sourcing suspect ore from Sociedad Minera La Rinconada and Inversur PJ&R and D&J Ares Groups in Madre de Dios--a hotspot for illegal mining, according the Ojo-Público report. Both companies have been accused of illegal mining, and their owners have been accused of money laundering after authorities seized millions of dollars of unknown provenance.
Prosecutors say that Minersur was “established in order to collect gold of illicit origin, legitimizing it using the name of a company authorized [by the state] to export it overseas.” Méndez, Minersur’s owner, is also under investigation for money laundering. He has denied all charges. https://www.insightcrime.org/news/analysis/peru-targets-multinationals-illegal-gold/
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3-21-19 The Venezuelan Central Bank (BCV) sold 73.2 tons of gold in 2018 to two companies in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and one in Turkey. The sales took place without the National Assembly’s approval, as mandated by Article 187 of the National Constitution. The claim, presented in February 2019 by deputy Carlos Paparoni, president of the National Assembly Finance Commission, recalled there could be no contracts of national public interest with foreign states or companies without the approval of the parliament. https://www.insightcrime.org/news/analysis/venezuelas-stolen-gold-ended-turkey-uganda-beyond/
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3-13-19 On January 28, the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the Treasury Department issued sanctions against PDVSA stating that “Venezuela’s state-run oil company… has long been a vehicle for corruption… for the personal gain of corrupt Venezuelan officials and businessmen.”
Official documents of the Venezuelan oil company state that PDV Caribe, one of PDVSA’s subsidiaries, owns 60 percent of Alba Petróleos. The latter is a private-public venture funded in 2006 in El Salvador and is heavily linked to the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional – FMLN).
In Nicaragua, PDVSA owns 51 percent of Alba de Nicaragua (Albanisa). The other 49 percent is owned by municipalities under the control of Daniel Ortega’s regime, according to an investigation by Connectas, and confirmed by official documents InSight Crime had access to. https://www.insightcrime.org/news/analysis/pdvsa-subsidaries-central-america-sanctions/
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3-8-19 Criminal gangs, members of Venezuela’s Bolivarian National Guard (Guardia Nacional Bolivariana – GNB), Colombia’s National Liberation Army (Ejército de Liberación Nacional – ELN) and dissident factions of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia – FARC) are behind extortion rackets, contract killings, illegal gold mining and other illicit activities involving contraband and drug trafficking, according to a recent International Crisis Group report.
These armed groups — entrenched in Venezuela’s border states of Amazonas and Bolívar –have stoked a climate of violence between rival criminal groups and civil society.
The ELN continues to be the strongest criminal actor operating across 13 of Venezuela’s 24 states, according to the report. In particular, the guerrillas earn some 60 percent of their illicit profits in southern Venezuela. Much of the profit comes from illegal mining, where the group controls an east-west corridor that runs across the main mineral regions. https://www.insightcrime.org/news/brief/southern-venezuela-south-america-organized-crime-gold-mine/
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3-1-19 It is no secret that the Venezuelan National Armed Forces (Fuerza Armada Nacional Bolivariana--FANB) are the Maduro government’s main prop, but just how strong is their support? And what is the basis for their loyalty?
Militarism has characterized the past 20 years of Chavista rule in Venezuela. Both Chávez and Maduro have fanned the flames of the FANB’s loyalty by placing military officials in virtually all government institutions and militarizing public security forces. But they even went beyond those measures by granting the military new functions and perhaps most importantly, new sources of income in their creation of financial institutions, mining companies and other structures for them to run….Venezuelan NGO Control Ciudadano estimates that the four arms of the FANB (army, national guard, air force and navy) currently number between 136,000 and 140,000 troops….
The FAES is an elite unit that Maduro created during the 2017 protests specifically to defend the Chavista revolution. Since then, it has morphed into little more than an extermination group, according to Venezuelan and international human rights organizations like PROVEA. The police unit has been involved in the alleged extrajudicial executions of more than 675 people from working-class neighborhoods, sometimes under accusations that they were criminals.
The FAES now stands at approximately 1,600 strong, an Interior Ministry official told InSight Crime, and has worked to brutally oppress the newest wave of Venezuela’s anti-government protests since January.
“This is one of the few police groups that could remain loyal to Maduro because they have been indoctrinated and have received special training to act according to political objectives. They were created to handle political situations like the one going on right now in Venezuela. They’re prepared to kill,” the official told InSight Crime from Caracas.
He added that another reason why some of the FAES could remain loyal to Maduro is that many of them started out in the colectivos, groups that have always been sympathetic to the Chavez and Maduro governments and have become increasingly armed and violent. Maduro likely recruited so many FAES members from the colectivos for their callousness and bloodthirstiness, which has been confirmed by PNB and FAES officials who recently abandoned the police force as well as by colectivo leaders, all of whom spoke to InSight Crime from Venezuela. https://www.insightcrime.org/news/analysis/armed-groups-propping-venezuelas-government/
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2-14-19 Carfentanil, a fentanyl analog, is an estimated 100 times more potent than fentanyl, and has been detected in places as disparate as San Diego and New Hampshire, US counterdrug officials in both areas told InSight Crime. Reports of carfentanil have also risen from zero in 2015, to over 6,000 incident reports in 2017.
Enter Kulkin of Bulgaria. Working undercover, multiple US counterdrug agents in New England, California, Santo Domingo, and Tijuana began interacting with his network. Eventually, they conducted confidential undercover source meetings in Santo Domingo and Tijuana, and undercover pill purchases in California.
The investigation led to seizures in California and uncovered connections between Kulkin’s network and the Sinaloa Cartel, including strains of other Sinaloa-related distribution networks operating in the United States. In August 2018, US counterdrug agents, working with Mexican authorities, developed a strategy to arrest Kulkin in Mexico, as well as other parts of his distribution network in Massachusetts.
And in September 2018, after locating his apartment in Mexicali, Mexican authorities arrested Ivan Arredondo-Ramirez who tried to bribe his way to freedom before being taken into custody. Arredondo-Ramirez later admitted to being Kulkin’s boss.
Soon after, authorities arrested Kulkin and found the carfentanil/fentanyl laboratory. There they seized as much as 20,000 counterfeit pills and a pill press, among other items, which Arredondo-Ramirez and Kulkin allegedly used to produce counterfeit pills, which they sold in the US.
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2-12-19 To investigate Mexico’s role, we found we had to look at the entire distribution chain. InSight Crime employed two researchers in Mexico, two in the United States, and two in Colombia who combed through databases, scoured judicial documents, filed freedom of information requests, and executed dozens of interviews in Mexico and the United States with law enforcement, prosecutors, health specialists, and others. The result is a nuanced picture but one with troubling implications for the future of drug trafficking and drug consumption.
While seemingly dominated by two large criminal groups in Mexico, the fentanyl trade requires vast networks of smaller subcontractors who specialize in importing, producing, and transporting synthetic drugs. Both large and small organizations appear to be taking advantage of the surge in popularity of the drug, which is increasingly laced into other substances such as cocaine, methamphetamine, and marijuana—very often without the end-user knowing it. To be sure, rising seizures of counterfeit oxycodone pills laced with fentanyl illustrate that the market is maturing in other ways as well.
Fentanyl’s potency also opens the door to entrepreneurs who bypass Mexico altogether, obtaining their supplies directly from China and selling them on the dark web. There is little public understanding of the prevalence of this part of the trade and even less of its medium- and long-term implications. The low barrier of entry into this market and its high returns make for a frightening future in which synthetic drugs of all types could proliferate. https://www.insightcrime.org/investigations/fentanyl-summary-major-findings/
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2-12-19 In October 2017, two Chinese men--Xiaobing Yan and Jian Zhang--were indicted for conspiring to manufacture and distribute “large quantities” of fentanyl and fentanyl analogs in the United States. Although they used multiple names and company identities over a period of six years, investigators were able to trace the fentanyl shipments back to four clandestine labs and two chemical plants in China….
The two chemical plants operated by Yan “were capable of producing ton quantities of fentanyl and fentanyl analogs,” according to an official US Department of Justice press release. Apart from the two Chinese nationals, 19 others were indicted for conspiring to distribute the illicitly-produced fentanyl and fentanyl analogs throughout the United States.
But Yan’s factories responsible for the fentanyl were producing a panoply of illicit substances. The nine-count indictment against Yan read like chemistry test. The government noted Yan’s production of pentedrone as well as 4-MEC (4-methylethcathinone), both noted ingredients in so-called “bath salts,” designer drugs popular in nightclubs in Europe and the US. There was also AM-2201, a synthetic marijuana. In the end, prosecutors named over 20 different chemical configurations.
Yan had obviously shifted production to fentanyl as soon as he saw the opioid become a drug of choice among the opioid-consuming population.
The indictments also provide further evidence of the substances exported from China directly to the United States and with Canada as a transshipment point, and shed light into how quickly Chinese groups can alter fentanyl-family substances to escape scheduling efforts. Yan, for example, closely monitored scheduling decisions and law enforcement activities to modify the structure of his chemical analogs to avoid detection, the US Justice Department said.
An estimated 160,000 chemical companies are currently operating either legally or illegally in China, according to the US Department of State. China’s chemical industry suffers from poor regulation, thus allowing fentanyl precursor chemicals to be diverted into clandestine labs by criminal groups, the US State Department says. A lack of oversight paired with administrative inefficiencies has also allowed illegal chemical factories to spring up and manufacture significant quantities of precursors that make their way directly to the US or via Mexico, where criminal groups are also quickly adapting to new market.
The second indictment against Zhang follows this narrative. Zhang operated four labs and exported fentanyl, fentanyl analogs, as well as pill presses, stamps, and other materials to shape fentanyl into pills in the United States, the US Justice Department said.
In addition to fentanyl, US prosecutors said Zhang was producing ANPP, acetyl fentanyl, and furanyl fentanyl, all fentanyl analogs. He’d then channeled them through freight forwarding companies that moved the chemical substances into the US via Canada hiding their activities behind aliases such as “Joe Bleau,” the Canadian version of Joe Blow.
China has attempted to control the development of countless numbers of fentanyl analogs and precursor chemicals. But during our investigation into fentanyl-trafficking networks, we found that implementation of these initiatives has proven difficult as law enforcement and drug investigators struggle to keep track of high levels of pharmaceutical and chemical output. https://www.insightcrime.org/investigations/china-fentanyl-production-adaptability/
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2-1-19 BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - Former Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner intends to run for the office again this October, two sources close to left-leaning politician told Reuters, the strongest indication yet that the populist leader will look to mount a challenge to incumbent Mauricio Macri. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-argentina-election-fernandez-exclusiv/exclusive-argentinas-fernandez-plans-election-run-against-macri-sources-idUSKCN1PQ5RB
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3-18-19 Argentina's former president Cristina Kirchner was charged in yet another corruption investigation Monday, in this case over the fraudulent import of liquid gas.
Judge Claudio Bonadio, who Kirchner accuses of political persecution, requested that the ex-president be placed in pre-trial detention, but her partial immunity as a senator shields her from imprisonment.
Among the 10 cases brought against Kirchner, the most notable is the "corruption notebooks" scandal in which she is accused of having received tens of millions of dollars in bribes. In that case, the prosecution claims that a total of $160 million in bribes were handed over between 2005 and 2015. She will face trial for corruption in May in a case in which she is accused of having favored businessman Lazaro Baez in the attribution of 52 public works contracts worth 46 billion pesos ($1.2 billion) during her presidency. https://www.france24.com/en/20190318-argentinas-kirchner-charged-new-corruption-case
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2-10-15 According to the leaked files, clients connected to Venezuela were associated with about $14.8 billion in their respective HSBC accounts. Only Switzerland and the United Kingdom had more dollars in private HSBC accounts, reported the ICIJ. Meanwhile, files that date from 2006 to 2007 showed that at one point, one HSBC client — which appears to be Venezuela’s Treasury Office — held approximately $11.9 billion. …
Only Mexico and Panama ranked significantly in terms of the total dollar amount associated with clients connected to this region of Latin America. As has been extensively reported, lax HSBC controls allowed Mexican drug trafficking organizations to launder billions of dollars, while Panama is a popular country for offshore bank accounts and a well-documented hub for illicit financial transactions.
Compared to Central America and even the Andes, clients connected to Southern Cone nations — Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, and Brazil — had far greater sums of money held by the HSBC Swiss branch….
the report does profile a few persons of interest who are named in the leaked files. In Latin America, a few well-known figures who appear include Paraguay’s President Horacio Cartes; Venezuela’s former national treasurer, Alejandro Andrade; Ecuadorean politician and agribusiness tycoon Alvaro Noboa; and Mexico billionaire Carlos Hank Rhon, whose family has been linked to drug trafficking and money laundering for the Tijuana Cartel. https://www.insightcrime.org/news/analysis/hsbc-latin-american-clients-with-swiss-bank-accounts/
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- BrandVoice
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