ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, March 2, 1997 TAG: 9703030071
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
Other DEA money-laundering stings carried out in recent years:
*Operation Dinero: The Atlanta DEA set up its own bank in the British West Indies that charged fees so steep - up to 20 percent - that only criminals were interested in becoming customers. The agency shut the bank down after just six months in 1994, having laundered $48 million. They returned $40 million of it to Colombia.
The investigation uncovered a partnership between the Cali cartel and Italian mafia. It also resulted in nearly 100 arrests worldwide, and the seizure of 50 tons of cocaine, $80 million in cash, and three paintings worth $15 million, including a Picasso.
*Operation Green Ice: DEA agents set up leather-good shops around the country that imported merchandise from Colombia. This created a legitimate paper trail for sending money back to South America or to cartel accounts in Switzerland and the Cayman Islands. One ton of leather would be listed as 20 tons on paperwork, with a corresponding amount of cash returned to the cartel.
Agents laundered millions of dollars that was handed over to them in laundry bags, suitcases and cardboard boxes. In Italy, narcotics agents working with the DEA laundered money by posing as an animal protection society.
Agents arrested at least 170 people and seized $55 million in cash and a ton of cocaine.
*Operation Polar Cap: In 1989, federal agents announced that they had broken up a money-laundering ring used by the Medellin cartel of Colombia. The ring had laundered $1.2 billion for the cartel through phony gold sales. Based in New York, Los Angeles and South Florida, the gold "front business" would wire drug funds out of the country to Uruguay and Panama.
The government later froze 680 U.S. bank accounts to which agents said they traced the drug money. More than 450 of the accounts were quickly unfrozen after it became apparent they belonged to legitimate businesses and innocent owners who had purchased drug-tainted U.S. dollars on the Colombian black market to make investments in the United States.
Sources: Los Angeles Times, The Atlanta Constitution and The Miami Herald
LENGTH: Short : 45 linesby CNB