A former senior official at the US’ Drug Enforcement Administration, Derek Maltz, has told the Fox News television channel that officials working under the administration of President Barak Obama quashed a probe into trade-based money laundering (TBML).

Maltz says that Hezbollah, described by the US authorities as a terrorist group, operated the TBML scheme that involved the laundering of drug proceeds via sales in Africa of US sourced vehicles.

Very odd

The former official turned whistleblower said he “found it very, very odd” that used cars sourced from across the US were being exported to West Africa and that profits from those sales and drug trafficking were creating a US$200 million per month cash flow to Hezbollah.

Maltz says he talked with the then attorney general, Eric Holder, who seemed at the time to be “alarmed” by his findings, and yet there wasn’t any follow-up.

No follow up

“It was very strange for me sitting there listening to the attorney general of the United States directing his people to have a meeting to get more information from the DEA and our interagency partners about this global trade-based money laundering scheme and they weren’t interested,” Maltz continued. “It never happened. I can’t explain it.”

“So I found it kind of odd that we didn’t have a unity of effort to actually shut [the operation] down,” the whistleblower told Fox News.

Categories: Trade Based Financial crimes News