Thread: Money laundering, tax evasion suck billions from Mexican economy

Money laundering, tax evasion suck billions from Mexican economy

January 30, 2012 | 1:52pm

REPORTING FROM MEXICO CITY -- The Mexican economy is "hemorrhaging" billions of dollars annually because of money laundering, tax evasion and other forms of corruption, a new study has found.

Mexico lost $872 billion between 1970 and 2010, the Washington-based advocacy organization Global Financial Integrity said in an 80-page report released Monday. That averages a whopping 5.2% of gross domestic product, the group said.

“This is an enormously damaging reality for emerging markets and developing countries ... an enormously damaging drainage of resources," the group's director, Raymond W. Baker, said at a news conference.

It is money that could have been used to invest in education, to build roads or to fight the drug cartels, he noted, in a country with one of the largest gaps between rich and poor. "The negative ramifications are huge for everyday Mexicans,” he said.

One of the most common ways for money to flow illegally out of Mexico is trade manipulation or incorrect pricing, Baker said, when companies or individuals falsify invoices and undervalue or overvalue exports or imports. The Times recently reported that "trade-based" money laundering was fast becoming a favored method of powerful drug cartels.

"Trade-based laundering takes advantages of blind spots in international commerce," The Times said. "And the huge, and growing, volume of legitimate trade between Mexico and the U.S. — now nearly $400 billion a year — makes it extraordinarily hard to detect."

In its report, Global Financial Integrity said illicit cash outflows from Mexico soared after the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, went into effect -- from an annual average in the 1980s of $10 billion to $50 billion after 2000.

"NAFTA freed up trade," Baker said. "But it also freed up the opportunity to abuse trade."

Money laundering, tax evasion suck billions from Mexican economy - latimes.com

Yay! now they're here doing it!

No worries... you got 23 BILLION coming in from your invaders here in the US...

Mexico is the poorest run socialist dump hole and has been that way since Spain left.

Now they want to invade us and make it the same DUMP.

RELATED ???

http://www.alipac.us/f12/mexican-off...7/#post1255873

Well on it's way to the US Congress.