excerpt:
Of the $65 billion turnover of the global market for opiates, only 5-10% ($3-5 billion) is estimated to be laundered by informal banking systems. The rest is laundered through legal trade activities and the banking system.This is an important claim that points to the enormous amounts of drug money swallowed by the world financial system, including Western banks.
The report says that over the last seven years (2002-2008), the transnational trade in Afghan opiates resulted in worldwide sales of $400-$500 billion (retail value). Only 5-10% of this is estimated to be laundered by informal banking systems (such as hawala). The remainder is laundered through the legal economy, and importantly, through Western banks.
In fact, Antonio Maria Costa was quoted as saying that drug money may have recently rescued some failing banks: "Interbank loans were funded by money that originated from drug trade and other illegal activities", and there were "signs that some banks were rescued in that way". "At a time of major bank failures, money doesn't smell, bankers seem to believe," he wrote in UNODC's 2009 World Drug Report (emphasis in original).
read more @ asia times
2. opium cultivation in Myanmar increases
MANILA, Philippines — Opium cultivation in Myanmar has increased for the third year in a row, with the number of hectares rising by 11 percent—a total of almost 50 per cent since 2006—although production was down due to a fall in yield per hectare, the United Nations anti-drug agency said through the UN Manila office.
Opium hectares now total 31,700 and while this is still just a quarter of the amount grown in Afghanistan and a far cry from the early 1990s when Myanmar was the world’s biggest opium producer, “the trend is going in the wrong direction,” a UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) executive director Antonio Maria Costa said.
read more @ global nation3. Russian drug police seize 30kg of heroin in Moscow region
Around 30 kilograms of heroin have been seized in an operation in Moscow Region, local drug police said on Tuesday.
Three suspected members of a drug-trafficking gang were arrested during an operation conducted last Friday in the Domodedovsky district of the Moscow Region.
The police only revealed the details of the operation on Tuesday, saying that the heroin had been packed ready for transport and hidden near a children's recreation camp. The suspects were arrested when whey attempted to move the drugs.
Police stopped a Gazel van inside which they found two plastic bags each containing 15 kilograms of heroin. They said two of those arrested were a drug-addicted couple, and the driver was known to have been involved in drug trafficking on several prior occasions.
The investigation is ongoing, with the gang's ringleader still to be identified.
The spokesman said that the heroin was worth 360-750 million rubes ($10-$25 million).
An estimated 90% of heroin consumed in Russia is trafficked from Afghanistan via the ex-Soviet states of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, and most of the heroin sold in Europe passes through Russia on its way from Afghanistan.
The director of Russia's state antidrug committee said on Tuesday that illicit drug flows into Russia, mainly from Afghanistan, have almost doubled in the past year. Viktor Ivanov said this has led to a rise in violence in the North Caucasus.
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