COLOMBIA CRACKS DOWN ON DRUG CASH

Drug Traffickers Find It's Getting Harder To Smuggle Earnings Back
Into The Country

BOGOTA, Colombia -- Colombian police routinely try to detect
travelers attempting to smuggle drugs to the USA and Europe. This
year, they have turned their attention to travelers coming into
Colombia -- not with drugs, but with hundreds of thousands of dollars
and euros believed to be profits from the illegal drug trade.

Colombia is the world's largest source of cocaine. Most of the
estimated $35 billion annual cocaine market in the USA is supplied by
Colombian drug traffickers, despite $4 billion in U.S. aid since 2000
to assist the Colombian government's counternarcotics efforts,
including spraying herbicide on the crops that yield cocaine and heroin.

The government also has imposed controls on financial institutions.
It requires them to report the origins of deposits to prevent them
from laundering -- even unwittingly -- the proceeds from drug sales.

Finding it more difficult to repatriate profits through banks, drug
trafficking organizations have sought less traditional methods to
bring in cash.

Last week, police at Bogota's international airport nabbed a
21-year-old man arriving on a flight from Mexico who had strapped
$748,000 in crisp $100 bills inside a form-fitting Lycra girdle.

"When we're talking about people trying to smuggle in hundreds of
thousands of dollars at a time, it is highly likely that the cash is
the product of drug trafficking or some other illegal activity," says
Col. Orlando Pineda, director of Colombia's Customs Police.

Colombian authorities so far this year have confiscated $12.1 million
in dollars and euros illegally brought into the country by 26
different travelers arriving at the nation's international airports,
according to the Customs Police. That figure is up 67% from the same
period last year.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) estimates that $3.2
billion to $7.2 billion in wholesale drug profits are transported out
of the USA every year to Mexico and Colombia.

The trend known as bulk cash smuggling signals drug traffickers are
having trouble laundering proceeds from drug sales in the USA and
Europe, where regulatory agencies have tightened controls on
large-scale money transfers, according to the U.S. Embassy in Bogota.

Some of the innovative smuggling methods: Cash has been found stashed
inside bowling balls and candles, containers of bull semen, shampoo
bottles, the soles of shoes and a television.

"The drug traffickers believe that if it's successful in one
direction, it only makes sense it would be successful going in the
other direction," says John McKenna, a special agent with the DEA's
public affairs office.

Just as with cocaine and heroin being shipped out of the country,
police here often use specially trained dogs to identify the odor of
the inks and paper of dollars and euros carried by incoming travelers.

Most of the cash caught at airports comes from Europe, in particular
Spain, where there is a large Colombian immigrant community. Mexico,
traditionally a weigh station for Colombian drugs on their way to the
USA, also is a major departure point for incoming drug money.

The U.S. Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network,
in an advisory issued in April, warned of a "dramatic increase in the
smuggling of bulk cash proceeds from the sale of narcotics and other
criminal activities from the United States into Mexico." Once in
Mexico, the advisory states, it often is shipped to other countries,
including Colombia.

Tuesday, the Mexican attorney general's office said federal officials
at Mexico City's international airport on Friday seized nearly $1
million hidden inside a hydraulic cylinder that was expected to be
flown to Colombia.

As in the United States, Colombian legislation requires travelers
entering the country to declare cash in excess of $10,000. Concealing
more than that amount to transport it into or out of the country is a
crime punishable by up to five years in prison in the United States.
In Colombia, if the person with the cash is wanted on other charges,
he or she is apprehended. Otherwise they go free, but forfeit the
cash unless they can prove its legal origins. Few of those who are
caught can provide that proof, Pineda says.

The single largest catch of illegal cash came in May when police
arrested Arturo Belloso Rodriguez, a Mexican national. Police say he
had $950,000 strapped to his body and stuffed in the false bottoms of
his luggage. The packed cash was covered in shrink wrap and carbon
paper to avoid detection by X-ray machines.

Colombian police are seeking more help from other countries to try to
stop the money smuggling.

"Just like we stop drug mules on our end, in other countries they
should try to stop the 'money mules' before they get on the planes,"
Pineda says.