The U. S. government The U. S. has recorded more than $30 billion in imports from Colombia over the past decade that appear in the South American country’s export statistics.
The gap in business spouse statistics is more than 19% of the $157. 9 billion in Colombian imported goods reported by the U. S. Census Bureau. The U. S. Department of Health (USCB) has been the U. S. Department of Health (USCB) for the past decade.
The USCB reported imported services, implying that the hole may be significantly larger.
According to the tax DIAN, Colombia’s total exports to the United States amounted to $127. 5 billion between 2012 and 2021.
That’s $30. 4 billion less than imported goods reported through the USCB over the same period.
According to the U. S. Trade Representative (USTR), goods accounted for 75% of U. S. imports. He was in the U. S. from Colombia in 2019.
Including services, U. S. imports and U. S. U. S. citizens from Colombia had a total of $18. 7 billion, USTR boasts on its website.
What doesn’t make sense is that Colombia’s total exports to the U. S. are not worth it. The U. S. economy in 2019 was worth just over $11. 5 billion, according to the DIAN.
USTR says Colombia’s imports increased 77% between 2009 and 2019.
Colombia’s tax administration said last month that its customs department had reported more than 500 corporations suspected of sending invoices for fictitious goods and facilities since 2012.
Many of those reported through the DIAN were registered investors in valuable metals such as gold.
Companies accused of exporting shell companies and services
The DIAN list belongs to the so-called “pivot list” of the US Treasury Department. The U. S. government banned the industry with 370 Colombian corporations suspected of money laundering or financing illegal armed groups.
The main difference is that the U. S. The U. S. Department of Agriculture lists significantly fewer gold companies even though steel “is becoming the main major source of investment for illegal armed groups, even surpassing cocaine trafficking,” according to the United Nations Department of Transnational Crime. American States (OAS).
This confirms Interpol’s claims and is supported by allegations through the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCen), which said in November last year that oil extraction budgets illegal armed groups.
According to reports, in the shock zones, environmental crimes, coupled with illegal exploitation and oil theft, contribute about 38% of illicit income to armed groups, more than any other illicit activity, adding drug trafficking.
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime said in June that in Colombia, illegal armed teams (OAGs) and organized criminal teams (OCGs) were involved in the gold industry and money laundering.
This cash laundering became imaginable through, among other things, the inflation of legal gold export invoices or fictitious export invoices, according to a 2021 report through Global Financial Integrity, which analyzed gold exports between 2010 and 2018.
Colombia claims to have sold $11. 7 billion worth of gold, but the United States says it has bought $13. 9 billion. The $2. 2 billion that appears to have entered the Colombian economy but remained in a financial hideout.
In addition, Colombia exports more gold than it extracts, indicating that illegally mined gold adds to gold legally mined somewhere in the chain of origin, according to the OAS Transnational Crime Agency.
In 2019, Colombia reported gold exports of around 10 tons relative to that year’s domestic gold production. In recent years, the hole was even more pronounced. This suggests the imaginable large-scale export of illegal gold and the practice of trade-based cash laundering. through the false invoicing of Colombia’s gold exports.
Regardless, U. S. importers are not allowed to do so. The U. S. and other countries send far more cash to Colombia than their trading partners export.
UN and OAS reports have focused on the gold industry, which is vulnerable, but money launderers can use any form of foreign industry for industry-based cash laundering.
Companies on the so-called “Kingpin List”
The U. S. Treasury Departments are in charge of the U. S. U. S. officials said in 2021 that Colombian transnational criminal organizations (TCOs) make $10 billion a year from their cocaine sales to the U. S. The U. S. government (US) most commonly through “black market peso exchange and trade-based cash laundering” with its U. S. partners.
The U. S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has already informed the U. S. Congress. U. S. legal economy in 2019It had infiltrated through launderers who were also involved in the gold trade.
The U. S. market The U. S. plays a key role in the global exchange of valuable metals. TCO uses U. S. conscious corporations. U. S. Labor Force to Exploit U. S. RegulationsExporting illegally mined gold to the U. S. The U. S. government is responsible for laundering billions of dollars in illicit proceeds from fraudulent operations in Latin America.
In fact, the FBI has stated that TCOs on Colombian cocaine and gold exports are “threats to U. S. national security. “Foreign organizations between $12 billion and $48 billion annually.
The FBI under pressure that the company “remains committed to fighting this threat” and is “committed to collaborating with . . . the governments of the region” that consider illegal mining to be “a vital priority”.
It’s less difficult said than done, because “U. S. prosecutors are not in the U. S. Dollars. “”The U. S. will have to prove that the underlying crime is a specific illegal activity to obtain a cash laundering conviction,” law enforcement officials told the U. S. Congressional Government Accountability Office. Last year, the U. S. government last year.
The alleged involvement of legal mining corporations in illegal gold mining makes “its origin difficult to trace,” they added.
Shell corporations such as those reported through the DIAN in Colombia, shell corporations in offshore tax havens, and the movement of assets from notarial offices further complicate the detection of money laundering fraud.
For example, the main Colombian subsidiary of the Canadian mining corporation Aris registered its partnership with a notary in Bogotá in 2009 before registering with the Superintendence of Industry and Commerce and DIAN as a subsidiary of a Panamanian corporation of the same name.
Excerpt from the contract stating that Aris Mining’s subsidiary, Zandor Capital, founded in a notarial workplace two years prior to its official registration with the Chamber of Commerce.
This shady structure allows investors to own a registered company in the call for a leader in Colombia.
A wave of mergers with mining corporations with parent corporations in offshore tax havens and subcontractors operating their mines has turned Aris’ empire into an opaque network of corporations in Latin America and Africa.
The Canadian holding company’s subsidiaries in Colombia have been accused of links to crony capitalists and illegal armed teams for more than a decade.
Luz Angela Bahamon, Chief of Colombia’s Financial Crimes Prosecutor’s Office
Another is the fact that many government officials are more interested in the proceeds of money laundering than in national security, human rights, or crime-fighting.
The then-inspector general of the U. S. Department of JusticeU. S. Department of State (DOJ) Michael Horowitz discovered in July 2020 that the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) had laundered tens of millions of dollars between 2015 and 2017.
Mary Schaefer, then chief compliance officer of the DEA, was confident that “significant progress has been made in years and that efforts continue today” in a response.
In December 2021, however, a DEA agent was sentenced to 12 years in prison for money laundering with a “public official in Colombia” 3 months after one of his colleagues was sentenced to thirteen years after lying in court about his alleged ties to drug traffickers.
When my consumer joined the DEA, he learned to be corrupt, he learned to break the law.
In Colombia, laundering investigations related to drug trafficking and gold exports have also been hampered by corruption.
The head of monetary crimes at the Attorney General’s Office, Luz Angela Bahamon, faces corruption charges, in addition to one similar to an illegal gold smuggling network.
A report published by Colombian financial threat research firm Infolaft in July found that state entities were used to launder cash in 21 percent of the cases investigated.
This infiltration of government and global industry by organized crime has resulted in virtually enforcing the money laundering law without impeding the global industry.
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