By Dan Byrne for AMLi
MEXICO’s police and federal financial watchdog announced the freezing of 1,352 bank accounts across the country as part of massive laundering crackdown.
The accounts were alleged to have been used by fourteen drug cartels to handle more than $125 million in dirty money.
Mexico’s financial intelligence unit (UIF) said that it had found almost 1,500 people to have been attached to the bank accounts involved, Excelsior reports.
Many of these are well-known to authorities who are attempting to clamp down on the extensive system of drug cartels in Mexico.
Some of these cartels had “already been dismantled,” by authorities in Mexico while others were “in the process of dismantling,” UIF head Santiago Nieto said in a statement Tuesday.
The operations against cartels are part of the much-larger Mexican Drug War which began in its current form in 2006.
Authorities and military have fought for years to shut down various drug cartels who primarily move illegal substances through their networks to the United States.
Although much of the conflict has been centred away from Mexico City and towards the country’s northern border, an attempt was made by one cartel to assassinate Mexico City’s chief of police Omar Garcia Harfuch in June, AP Reports.
Some of the suspects and accounts which were frozen this week are linked to that assassination attempt, Harfuch advised.
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