Despite being removed from an international money laundering blacklist, more than $10 billion dollars was laundered in Colombia in 2012, or the equivalent of 3% of the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
According to the director of the Unit of Information and Financial Analysis (UIAF), there was over a $1 billion dollar increase in the amount laundered in 2012 compared to 2011. Despite stringent controls on entry and capital flight, money laundering associated with drug trafficking remains a serious problem in Colombia. Luis Edmundo Suarez, the director of UIAF, said that money laundering on such a grand scale can increase the cost of living for tax-paying citizens as well as further distort the peso against the United States dollar.
“It is clear that we have a problem of illegal dollar inflows affecting the foreign exchange market,” said Colombia’s finance minister Mauricio Cardenas.
The UIAF claimed to have successfully intercepted 30% of all laundering processes in 2011 and 2012 suggesting that the problem could have been that much worse.
Link to the original story (in Spanish): El lavado de activos, un cáncer financiero de $18 billones anuales (translated in English : click here)