Just to give a sense of how much money is involved in the drug trade, the Mexican military seized $500,000 in US currency from a Chevy truck that had been abandoned on the Culiacan-Navolato road just the other day. The guy just took off without his cash when he realized there was a military checkpoint nearby.
Since December 2006, the Army has seized $149 million in US currency, and about 263 million Mexican pesos (roughly $22 million US).
Needless to say, that's a fair amount of cash.
Malcolm, what happens to the money once it is in the army's possession? And could you provide a source for the statistics. I would like to pass this information on to my students. Thanks-Jaime
ReplyDeletehi Jaime,
ReplyDeletethe government handles the cash, sending it to three of its branches. How exactly it manages it I am not 100 percent sure; i know that in some cases, the money has been used to build rehab centers, in others, i think it goes straight into the drug war. Again, not 100 percent certain.
Re source, most of this info is posted on Mexican gov't web sites. I trust the military and PGR data, as they are pretty consistent and trained to simply tell the truth. Other numbers, of course, can be and probably are fudged, so I take those with a grain of skepticism. Hope that helps.