American financial institutions must soon cut ties with three Mexican counterparts that have laundered money on behalf of the terrorist drug cartels.
The Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) has sanctioned two banks and a brokerage firm with a combined $22 billion in assets.
The firms “have collectively played a longstanding and vital role in laundering millions of dollars on behalf of Mexico-based cartels and facilitating payments for the procurement of precursor chemicals needed to produce fentanyl,” the department alleges.
In a related move, Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has sanctioned TdA gang member Giovanni Vicente Mosquera Serrano. The sanctions block his access to assets in the United States.
The two banks whose activities are now blocked in the United States are CIBanco and Intercam. The two have assets of more than $7 billion and $4 billion respectively. Vector is the brokerage firm, with assets of $11 billion.
CIBanco, FinCEN alleges,
is of primary money laundering concern in connection with illicit opioid trafficking based on its long-standing pattern of associations, transactions, and provision of financial services that facilitate illicit opioid trafficking by Mexico-based cartels, including the Beltran-Leyva Cartel, Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), and Gulf Cartel. CIBanco has also facilitated the procurement of precursor chemicals from China for illicit purposes.
In 2023, a CIBanco employee “knowingly facilitated the creation of an account to purportedly launder $10 million on behalf of a Gulf Cartel member,” FinCEN further alleges.
Also accused of opioid trafficking, Intercam has “processed USD-denominated funds transfers that finance the procurement of precursor chemicals from China” for drug traffickers.
In 2022, Intercam executives
met directly with suspected CJNG members to discuss money laundering schemes, including transferring funds from China. From 2021 through 2024, a China-based company associated with an individual shipping precursor chemicals from China to Mexico for illicit purposes received over $1.5 million from Mexico-based companies through Intercam.
Vector, FinCEN alleges, has laundered money on behalf of the Gulf and Sinaloa cartels. It has “also facilitated” the purchase of Chinese precursors:
For example, from 2013 through 2021, a Sinaloa Cartel money mule employed various methods to launder $2 million from the United States to Mexico through Vector.
Additionally, … from 2018 through 2023, Vector was found to have completed over $1 million in payments on behalf of Mexico-based companies to China-based companies known to have shipped precursor chemicals to Mexico for illicit purposes.
Importantly, Treasury notes, on his first day in office, President Trump designated three of the cartels for which the banks and brokerage laundered money — CJNG, Gulf, and Sinaloa — as foreign terrorist organizations and/or specially designated global terrorists.
Issued pursuant to the Fentanyl Sanctions and the FEND Off Fentanyl acts, the orders forbid U.S. financial institutions from transmitting funds from CIBanco, Intercam, or Vector. Also blocked is transmitting funds “from or to any account or convertible virtual currency address administered by or on behalf of” the institutions.
The orders go into effect 21 days after they are published in the Federal Register.
On Tuesday, OFAC sanctioned fugitive TdA leader Giovanni Vicente Mosquera Serrano. That same day, the FBI added him to its 10 Most Wanted List. TdA is also a designated terror outfit.
According to the Treasury report:
TdA is involved in illicit drug trade, human smuggling and trafficking, extortion, sexual exploitation of women and children, and money laundering, among other criminal activities.
Mosquera Serrano faces terrorism and drug trafficking charges. He has overseen not only trafficking on behalf of the terror gang, but also murders, Treasury alleges. Furthermore, he is a gang extortionist and “managed the financial proceeds of the gang’s criminal activities.”
The sanction means that “all property and interests in property” in the United States or controlled by “U.S. persons is blocked and must be reported to OFAC.” As well, any “entities” in which Mosquera Serrano has an interest of 50 percent or more are also blocked.
The reward for information leading to the thug’s arrest and conviction could be as much as $3 million.
As The New American reported in March, citing the Miami Herald, TdA is the paramilitary wing of the corrupt Venezuelan regime headed by dictator Nicolas Maduro. Former CIA operative Gary Bernsten’s comments to the Herald prove that Trump was right when he assessed TdA’s operations in his executive order that triggered the Alien Enemies Act to remove TdA terrorists from the country:
TdA operates in conjunction with Cártel de los Soles, the Nicolas Maduro regime-sponsored, narco-terrorism enterprise based in Venezuela, and commits brutal crimes, including murders, kidnappings, extortions, and human, drug, and weapons trafficking. TdA has engaged in and continues to engage in mass illegal migration to the United States to further its objectives of harming United States citizens.
Bernsten told the Herald that Maduro sent 300 TdA terrorists to the United States.
As well, he told the paper:
The Venezuelan regime has assumed operational control of these guys [Tren de Aragua] and has trained 300 of them; they have given them paramilitary training, training them to fire weapons, on how to conduct sabotage, how to use crypto. They have given them all like a four- to six-week course. They put these 300 guys through that course and … were deploying them into the United States to 20 locations, to 20 separate states.
The Maduro regime’s goal, Bernsten told the Herald, was planting 5,000 TdA terrorists in the United States.
That claim comports with TdA’s establishing major operations in multiple U.S. cities.