The feds have seized more than $31 million allegedly stashed in American banks by Peruvian drug traffickers who’ve been disguising their cocaine-processing operations as gold-mining businesses.
The money was deposited in nine accounts at banks including JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo and Bank of America, the Manhattan US Attorney’s Office and the Drug Enforcement Administration said yesterday.
According to the feds, members of the Sanchez-Paredes crime family — which supplies cocaine cartels in Columbia and Mexico — have been laundering their drug money by investing in mining companies, farms and other businesses.
In 2007, Peruvian authorities seized more than 125 tons of calcium oxide that had been purchased by two of the firms, Comarsa and San Simon, which purportedly operate gold mines.
The chemical is used both to mine gold and produce cocaine, but Comarsa’s records allegedly show the amount of calcium oxide it used didn’t jibe with what it needed to process gold.
Court papers say that this “suggests that Comarsa is not actually involved in the business of mining gold, but rather in the business of producing cocaine.”
A Comarsa exec told Reuters the firm denied those allegations, saying, “It seems like there was a misunderstanding by the US attorney.”