"These were off-book loans so that you couldn't directly tie it to the capital that was sitting in Luxembourg. "Very similar to what you see in the Panama Papers today in the way this money moves around," Mazur explained.
Then, a loan would be made in almost an equal amount in another part of the world in the name of another offshore entity. Or they might take the money to Luxembourg and put it in an offshore account there.
(Escobar's Medellin cartel, at its height, was thought to have controlled more than 80 percent of the cocaine smuggled into the U.S.) and just logged as though it came from the Bahamas. But the cash was never physically in the Bahamas - it was in the U.S. They might, for example, use the Bahamas branch of BCCI and book the cash as though it were coming from there. BCCI was known to have accounts of drug operatives, terrorists, dirty bankers and others who want to hide money. Mazur said as an undercover operative, he was working with the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, a Luxembourg-based bank with branches in more than 70 countries, in order to launder the cartel's money. They would fill some cans with anchovies and others would be filled with cocaine and balanced with lead ingots and sand to make them the exact same weight as the anchovy cans. 2, but in real life, Mazur said, he's just a high-level operative in the cartel.)Īlcaino, Mazur said, used an anchovy-packing plant based in Buenos Aires to move the cocaine. Mazur never actually met Escobar in person (it was too dangerous to go to Colombia) but he became close with Roberto Alcaino, who is played by Benjamin Bratt in "The Infiltrator," and others who worked closely with Escobar. That's a tactic in the drug business known as "layering." They're also big on using free-trade zones. Typically, Mazur said, the money moves around a lot - through various businesses or offshore accounts in different jurisdictions to avoid being traced back to drug traffickers. It's as unique as snowflakes," Mazur said. "You can launder money so many different ways. The UNODC estimates that 30 percent to 40 percent of the cocaine and opiates being sold are intercepted - but less than 1 percent of the money is recovered. There are more than $320 billion in illicit drugs sold worldwide every year, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.