Breathe
By Barbara Anderson
These days, the civil association Signos Vitales launched a report in which they state that at least 8% of the remittances coming into the country from the United States are linked to illicit activities of organized crime. In other words, there would be a mechanism of 'money laundering' through these remittances that have been growing consistently month by month for the last two years.
"The analysts who say there is money laundering in remittances have very little knowledge about money laundering and about the financial system. They are not financiers," says Jesús Cervantes, who worked 33 years at Banxico as director of economic measurement (the unit that, among other tasks, prepares Mexico's balance of payments) and for the last 14 years has been a researcher at the Center for Latin American Monetary Studies (CEMLA), one of the think tanks that does the most research in Mexico and the United States on the regional phenomenon of remittances. "The current remittance statistics were developed when I was in charge of the subject and we included regulations that made it mandatory to provide information on the remittance industry," adds Cervantes.
