Chinese money launderers are facilitating international drug traffickers, like Mexican cartels and the Italian mafia.

Chinese money launderers are facilitating the fentanyl epidemic and helping international drug traffickers, like Mexican cartels and the Italian mafia, launder the proceeds of crime.

The FT investigates the connection between capital flight from China and global organised crime.

• The Financial Times reports via YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjGIp7kdS6E

So how does this work? mirror transfer.

• "[W]hat these underground banks do is they transfer money according to something that's called mirror transfer.

• A person, let's say, on the one end of the network will arrive with a sack full of money in cash, deposit it at the underground bank, and then through this mirror transfer, another person will pick up the same amount of money from the other branch of the same underground banking network.
• The crucial thing about this is that no money has actually been transferred.
• It's completely invisible to the authorities that might wish to crack down on it." "In fact, there is no “transfer” of any property, only a transfer of value.
• Bank “intermediaries” are essential to the process of such transfers.
• This is demonstrated by examining what happens with an “in-house” money transfer... Here, the bank simultaneously reduces its liability to one customer (the payer) and increases its liability to another (the payee).
• It can do so not because it helps solve a double-spending problem but because it is a common obligor to both payer and payee."

The only difference between the two types of transfer is that authorities have access to the accounts of banks but none to those of underground banks.

• "The main challenge is that we are not able to reconstruct all the compensations. Because once the bank transfers reach China all traceability ends. And it is also difficult to find collaboration with the Chinese authorities to trace [the money]."

Watch the 32-minute mini-doc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjGIp7kdS6E

00:00 - Introduction

00:55 - The rise of Chinese money brokers

03:06 - Fentanyl epidemic

04:51 - Ray Donovan

07:05 - All roads lead to Flushing

11:40 - Chinese money laundering goes global

12:32 - Italian mafias

13:46 - Ndrangheta

14:26 - Port of Gioia Tauro

16:26 - Illegal money collection centres

18:40 - Vanishing remittances

21:12 - Fentanyl deaths

25:07 - Project Sleeping Giants

27:35 - Xizhi Li

29:54 - Renewed cooperation with China

31:25 - Rise of triads

32:17 - Capital flight

The Financial Times reports via YouTube:

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjGIp7kdS6E

Other source

• https://www.linkedin.com/posts/kelvin-low-827a6a1a_chinese-brokers-launder-hundreds-of-millions-activity-7211254092885577728--XQE?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_ios

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