A police dog alerted on the money, indicating the cash was recently near drugs.
Soon after, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents seized the cash from an armored vehicle. Ayala said there are people willing to kill or torture the businessman to retrieve the debt owed, court records allege.Īyala then said he had “used these methods to make three people in Mexico disappear.”Īyala and the undercover agent made nine deposits, totaling roughly $4 million, into the undercover business account from November 2011 to December 2011, prosecutors said.Īuthorities said that in January 2012, Prodira imported $2 million into Texas via private aircraft piloted by a company employee. “There was no legitimate business reason to transact business in such a circuitous manner,” prosecutors stated.Īt a meeting in Orlando in November 2011, Ayala told the undercover agent about a Miami businessman who owed him money.
The undercover agent – who received a 0.3 percent fee for his work with Prodira – would then wire the funds to various accounts designated by Ayala. Negotiations followed, and the agent agreed to help Ayala and Prodira launder money by allowing the company to deposit cash into the undercover business bank account, the government alleges. In August 2011, law enforcement created an undercover business in Orlando, and an undercover agent met Ayala. “As part of that settlement, HSBC-USA admitted that the Sinaloa Cartel in Mexico and the Norte del Valle Cartel in Colombia laundered $881 million through its bank that was only detected retroactively,” Fagan said.įederal records show that during a two-year period, Ayala imported more than $130 million in American currency into the U.S. “Cartels make billions of dollars every year, and most of that money eventually has to make its way into the financial system,” Fagan said via e-mail.įagan said that most recently, HSBC Bank USA, based in New York, was fined $1.9 billion for failing to comply with money-laundering laws. Fagan, spokesman for Global Financial Integrity, a Washington-based research and advocacy organization. Money laundering is a tremendous problem in America’s fight against drug cartels, said E.J. Szubin, the department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control director, said in a statement.
“By exposing another key money operation tied to Los Zetas, Treasury is depriving the Zetas of an important avenue to launder their narco-dollars,” Adam J. The Treasury Department said Ayala leads a money-laundering network that makes large international transfers on behalf of Los Zetas, the powerful drug cartel. Department of the Treasury announced earlier this month that it designated Ayala and Prodira under the Kingpin Act, a measure that freezes their assets in the U.S.
0 kommentar(er)
