THE MULTI BILLION DOLLAR DRUG TRADE - or, we don’t have a money laundering problem in T&T)

A report in The Observer newspaper in England from last Sunday says that the head of the United Nations’ Office on Drugs and Crime, Mr. Antonio Maria Costa, is claiming that he has seen evidence that “the only liquid investment capital” available to some banks that were on the brink of collapse last year when the worldwide economic crisis began was drug money. He said that the result was that the majority of the $352bn of drug profits was absorbed into the system and was thus effectively laundered. He is quoted in the report as saying that “…the money from drugs was the only liquid investment capital in the second half of 2008, liquidity was the main problem and hence liquid capital became an important factor.” He goes on to say that there is evidence that inter bank loans were funded by money from the drugs trade and there are signs that this is how some banks were rescued.

The article is well worth reading. For one thing it certainly highlights how enormously powerful the drug cartels have now become. If most of the $352bn in drug profits are now effectively laundered and that money is now in the world’s legitimate financial system, you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to realise that this makes the men running these cartels even more powerful … and more dangerous. The line from the old song that said something about money making the world go around is very, very true!

Well, this article got me to thinking: what is happening down here in our own little neck of the woods concerning drug profits and money laundering? A few years ago somebody in Customs and Excise told me that the annual profits from the Trinidad drug trade were almost as big as this country’s annual budget! Is this true? I have no way of knowing or even of finding out without probably getting myself killed. But the question is a very serious one. And what is also extremely worrying is that nobody is talking about it! It is as if the problem simply does not exist!

Put another way, one wag recently pontificated to me that we have neither a serious drug problem (as concerns big drug money) nor do we have any money laundering in good old T&T! When I looked at him with incredulous surprise he laughed at me and said, “When last did you ever hear of a major drug lord being arrested and charged? When last did you hear of a banker being charged … let alone convicted … with money laundering? And the very definition of money laundering requires that it be done through a bank! I rest my case.”

He had a point. But I don’t believe that there is no money laundering in T&T. I don’t believe that enormous amounts of drug profits are not being accumulated. I don’t believe that we have no really big drug lords in this country. Do you? If you have the same beliefs as I do in this matter, then I have two last questions for you: why isn’t the media highlighting this? Don’t you think that this is an issue that ought to be on the media’s ‘front burner’?