• by IPS Correspondents (caracas)
• Tuesday, November 08, 1994
• Inter Press Service

CARACAS, Nov 08 (IPS) - Venezuelan banks have two months to implement inspections and controls to uncover laundering operations of drug trafficking money, the governmental Commission Against the Illicit Use of Drugs announced Tuesday.

Commission president Guillermo Romero said "banks must leave tracks, in the form of registers of transactions, especially in the area of real estate, where suspicious operations can be carried out."

Heads of the banking association said its institutions "have mechanisms necessary for the detection of illegal movements of money," and Romero said that banks "are willing to collaborate in the elimination of money laundering."

Detailed and up-to-date registers of movements of capital, especially in the real estate sector, are requirements set by Venezuela's anti-drug legislation which was reformed last year.

According to a judge who investigated cases of money laundering in 1993, during the 1984-93 period in Venezuela 14 billion dollars were laundered in the real estate sector alone.

However, reluctant to provide estimates regarding drug trafficking activity, police talk about a total of two billion dollars a year.

Vladimir Gessen, who formerly headed a parliamentary anti-drug commission blamed part of the capital flight which the country suffered in the first six months of this year on money laundering, but said that exchange rate controls set on Jun. 27 in Venezuela helped curtail laundering activity.

Romero announced the creation of a financial research centre in his Commission to prevent laundering of drug trafficking money, and in two months his organisation will evaluate the progress of the established bank controls.

© Inter Press Service (2014) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service

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