Financial Transparency Coalition

Late last month, during peace negotiations in Cuba, Colombia’s Marxist-Leninist rebel army organization, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (also known as FARC) signed an agreement with the Colombia government to jointly combat illicit drugs. This is a relatively surprising accord, since many analysts believe FARC receives significant funding from this very trade. Estimates place FARC’s proceeds from the cocaine trade in Colombia around $500 to $600 million annually, mainly through a “tax” FARC places on coca farmers and their coordination of the cocaine smuggling networks. Under the agreement last month, however, FARC agreed that it would completely...

Yesterday, Colombia's Prosecutor-General, Viviane Morales, spoke about the pervasive role money laundering plays in Colombia's economy while participating in Pan American Congress on Money Laundering Risk and Terrorism Financing in the city of Cartagena. She cited statistics from her government that place the scale of money laundering at $8 billion, roughly 3% of GDP. She also said the government lacked the ability to effectively address the situation. The eStandards Foundation, which montiors financial standards around the world, had this to say about Colombian compliance programs: he U.S. Department of State (DoS) reported in 2008 that the banking...

Cocaine is the drug of choice in several European countries, but most notably, Spain, which has the highest per capita consumption of cocaine in the continent. It is so prevalent, in fact, that researchers have found the drug in an analysis of the air in Madrid and Barcelona (concentrations are even higher on weekends). And if you examine a random bank note in Spain, there is a 94% chance you’ll find traces of cocaine on it. This problem hasn’t been getting much better for Spain or for the rest of Europe, for that matter. In fact, in November of...