00:00 Bertrand Monet spent the first two parts of this series investigating the production and
00:06 sale of fentanyl.
00:09 The potent drug that killed some 130,000 people in the US last year.
00:15 The drug is a cash cow for Mexican cartels.
00:19 Especially the most powerful one of all.
00:21 The Sinaloa cartel.
00:24 2,400%.
00:26 That's the return rate on fentanyl trafficking.
00:33 But where do these billions of dollars go?
00:40 The answer lies in money laundering.
00:44 To start with, we would need two billion apartments.
00:48 And then we sell the properties and we can put the money into the bank.
01:09 Back to Culiacan, the Sinaloa cartel's stronghold in northwestern Mexico.
01:15 Monet met a leader from a major cartel clan here a few weeks ago.
01:19 He explained how the cartel exports fentanyl.
01:24 Monet showed him PowerPoint slides for his business class so he could learn about the
01:28 last phase in the Narcos' business plan.
01:31 Money laundering.
01:33 There are three phases to money laundering.
01:36 The first is called the "de-materializing" phase.
01:39 This means dematerializing the money, transforming tens of billions of dollars of cash into paperwork
01:45 across thousands of bank accounts.
01:48 To do this, Narcos inject the cash into the accounts of the thousands of businesses they
01:53 control, or deposit the money directly into complicit banks.
01:57 These techniques are well known to Mexican police and the DEA, the US anti-drug agency
02:03 that tracks the cartel.
02:05 But the Narcos are highly suspicious, so the Narcos have to immediately move to money layering.
02:11 The second phase of laundering, when they migrate their money to multiple accounts in
02:15 Mexico and other countries in order to hide it from the authorities.
02:19 Or better yet, move the money to accounts that are virtually invisible because they
02:23 are located in tax havens or offshore locations.
02:27 The third phase of money laundering is integration, when the cartel puts billions of dollars into
02:32 the local economy.
02:35 In which kind of businesses do you invest your money once it has been laundered?
02:42 [Spanish]
03:05 And in which countries do you invest the money?
03:08 [Spanish]
03:37 Eduardo says that cartels can now move money even faster by using cryptocurrencies.
03:42 Can you explain how you are paid in bitcoins?
03:46 [Spanish]
04:14 The most complex phase of money laundering is layering.
04:20 To hide their money, Narcos take advantage of the black holes of global banking.
04:26 Tax havens.
04:28 For their next meeting a few weeks later, Muneh finds Eduardo not in Culiacan, but some
04:37 14,000 kilometers away, in the most opaque of all tax havens.
04:43 Dubai.
04:45 [Music]
04:55 [French]
05:12 [Spanish]
05:15 Can you tell me what you are doing here in Dubai?
05:18 [Spanish]
05:27 And why do you choose Dubai?
05:29 [Spanish]
05:58 [Spanish]
06:11 [Music]
06:13 [French]
06:21 Dubai is a country where only the banker knows the client's name.
06:25 A banker that is bound to secrecy.
06:28 There are dozens of tax havens, many closer to Mexico than Panama, where the cartel has
06:33 been laundering money for decades.
06:35 [French]
06:44 These are the famous leaks many of us already know, like the Panama and Paradise Papers.
06:51 Plus, powerful states can exert pressure to have banking secrecy lifted, so that they
06:56 can obtain banking information on the tax evaders or criminals thereafter.
07:00 [French]
07:13 This allows, theoretically, for the exchange of information on wanted persons or assets
07:18 between states.
07:20 This is where Dubai is very useful for organized crime.
07:24 And I understood this by accompanying this narco on an important meeting he had there.
07:29 [Spanish]
07:58 [Spanish]
08:07 To invest in Dubai, narcos have to go through trust companies, which are legal financial
08:12 consulting firms set up in the Emirates.
08:15 [Music]
08:17 Moné has known Eduardo for nearly 10 years.
08:21 Eduardo has seen Moné work within sensitive areas of the cartel, meeting some of its leaders
08:26 without ever endangering the network.
08:29 So he knows Moné won't reveal names or identities in Dubai.
08:35 Eduardo agrees to let Moné pretend to be his faux partner, to listen in on meetings
08:42 with two heads of a trust company.
08:44 Eduardo knows that Moné is secretly recording the meeting on his iPhone, without the others
08:50 knowing.
08:51 [Spanish]
09:17 [Spanish]
09:24 [Spanish]
09:34 [Spanish]
09:45 [Spanish]
09:52 [Spanish]
09:57 [Spanish]
10:02 [Spanish]
10:13 [Spanish]
10:19 [Spanish]
10:29 [Spanish]
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10:43 [Spanish]
10:51 [Spanish]
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12:07 [Spanish]
12:14 [Spanish]
12:24 But Dubai offers additional protection. It's one of the world's largest offshore real estate hubs,
12:29 where foreign-owned assets are valued at $146 billion, twice as much as in London.
12:36 However, the property of a real estate agent is not information that should be exchanged
12:42 within a judicial cooperation between two states.
12:46 So, once he has been placed in Dubai's real estate,
12:50 the cartel's money has become invisible to the United States
12:54 and can be reinvested without risk in any legal business.
12:59 [Spanish]
13:17 [Spanish]
13:24 [Spanish]
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13:36 [Spanish]
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13:54 [Spanish]
14:20 [Spanish]
14:25 [Spanish]
14:32 [Music]
14:36 Monet did not attend the second meeting between Eduardo and the financiers,
14:41 and he doesn't know if they're now working together.
14:45 But he does know one thing.
14:50 To eradicate the trading of fentanyl, it will require more than waging war on cartels in Mexico.
14:57 States have to fight tax havens, like in Dubai,
15:00 the financial black hole that cartels rely on to launder their money.
15:04 And it has to be done quickly.
15:07 It's been five months since Monet recorded the last footage for this investigation.
15:13 More than the number of deaths caused by road accidents or firearms in the country.
15:20 And as the narcos told Monet, their next target is Europe.
15:25 [Music]
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