A massive leak of confidential documents from a Panamanian law firm shines a light on how elites across the world use offshore shell companies in order to hide their assets, in some cases facilitating corruption and money laundering. Investigative journalists from fifteen countries in Latin America and the Caribbean — as well as Puerto Rico…
Category: Cartel Corner
Cartel Corner #71: The CJNG (Jalisco Nueva Generación Cartel) Expanding into Baja, California
The Jalisco Nueva Generación cartel — one of Mexico’s strongest and fastest-growing criminal organizations — is moving into Baja California, just across the border from the US, according to an official from the Mexican attorney general’s office. It seems increasingly likely that the CJNG, as the cartel is known, is challenging the powerful Sinaloa cartel…
Cartel Corner #70: El Chapo’s Top Money Launderer, “King Midas” Has Been Caught
Mexican federal police and military units arrested Juan Manuel Álvarez Inzunza, aka “King Midas,” the alleged top money-launderer for the Sinaloa cartel of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, on Sunday in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca. Álvarez Inzunza, who was on vacation in Oaxaca when he was captured without violence, was arrested on a provisional extradition…
Cartel Corner #66: Drug Cartels Are Taking over the Mexican Tortilla Biz
Samuel ran down the steep dirt track lined with blue and pink houses desperate to escape. The 20-year-old took long strides and ran from one side to the other in a zigzag. He begged for someone to open the door of a house so he could hide, but nobody did. That mid-morning, the poor and…
Cartel Corner #65: Cartel Firefight Near TX Border Kills 10
REYNOSA, Tamaulipas — The residents of this border city had a rude awakening as cartel gunmen and authorities clashed in a fierce gun battles for more than three hours that left at least 10 dead. Rumors among residents point to the capture of a commander within the Gulf Cartel. The violence began shortly after 5:17…
Border Security: The Legacy of Pancho Villa’s Raid on America
Ever since “Black Jack” Pershing rode into Mexico to hunt for Pancho Villa, the United States started a pattern of personalizing Latin American security threats. In the words of one U.S. cavalry officer, Columbus, New Mexico in 1916 was little more than “a cluster of adobe houses, a hotel, a few stores and streets knee…
Cartel Corner #61: El Salvador’s Murder Rate Getting Worse
El Salvador has not experienced such a bloody start to the year since the small Central American country was submerged in a brutal civil war that ended a generation ago. The first two months of 2016 ended with 1,399 murders, more than double the number for the same period in 2015 when homicide rates had already…
Cartel Corner #60: Profile of The ‘Texis’ Cartel of El Salvador
Unlike some Central American gangs that have earned fame for their brutality and their liberal use of violence, the Cartel de Texis has developed a reputation for a more business-like approach to the drug trade. But as the report by Salvadoran news site El Faro about the group illustrates, while the gang isn’t known for leaving…
Cartel Corner #59: El Chapo Hates Mexican Prison So Much He Wants to Be Extradited
Or is it ole’ Sneaky El Chapo just wants the chance for a paid group of serious pipe hitters to break him out during the transfer? Hmmmm, Enquiring Minds want to know.-SF At the same time, the drug lord’s wife has warned the Mexican authorities that they will live to regret her husband’s extradition because of…
Cartel Corner #58: The Next Generation of Narco’s
There was a time, the story goes, when if a local collided with a drug trafficker’s car on the streets of Culiacán — a bastion of the infamous Sinaloa cartel — the narco was likely to hop out to check that everything was ok. “They’d say: ‘If you have any problems call this doctor and…