Chinese money laundering organizations provide ‘cheap, fast, and almost guaranteed’ services to cartels, DEA agent Brian Clark told The Epoch Times.
Agent Brian Clark still remembers a breakthrough case a decade ago.
His team at the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) arrested a Chinese money launderer at a U.S. airport where the individual had a layover.
The person had coordinated money pickups and drop-offs for the Sinaloa Cartel in Mexico. Mexican law enforcement identified him while he had lunch with a cartel leader in the country. The two of them discussed a then-recent DEA seizure of cash in New York.
The Chinese money launderer later cooperated with law enforcement and provided extensive information about how the laundering operation worked.
Between 2015 and 2016, Chinese money laundering networks began emerging, according to Clark, special agent in charge of the DEA’s Los Angeles Field Division. He said that, by 2019, the Chinese had dominated the laundering marketplace.
Now, the Chinese money laundering organizations are “one of the key actors laundering money professionally in the United States and around the globe,” according to the latest National Money Laundering Risk Assessment report by the Department of the Treasury.
Chinese money laundering organizations provide “cheap, fast, and almost guaranteed” services to cartels, Clark told The Epoch Times, resulting in cartels having more money to cause more harm with drug trafficking.
Drug overdoses, especially opioids, have claimed the lives of more than 100,000 Americans every year in recent years, with the exception of a decline last year, according to the DEA.
Experts say that Chinese money laundering is a global operation supported by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and poses a grave danger to the United States.
Reports from think tanks and intergovernmental organizations link the CCP’s global investments to increased illicit trade and corruption.
“China, directly and indirectly, profits from money laundering operations that touch its economy and financial sector through the international trading system or its underground banking,” David M. Luna, executive director at the International Coalition Against Illicit Economies, told The Epoch Times. He is also a former U.S. diplomat and national security official.
“The CCP allows it because it is so lucrative, and helps China to expand the global illegal economy that drives their commercial and mercantilist expansion in many corners of the world and geopolitical ambitions for power dominance.”
By Terri Wu
