Samenvatting

This article examines the financial management of wholesale drug trafficking. Four characteristics are identified. First, buying on credit is not uncommon in the wholesale business. The second characteristic is liability. The person who is in possession of the drugs, is also financially responsible for the amount involved. A third characteristic is a high turnover rate. To reduce the risk of liability, the drugs are held for as short a time as possible. Fourthly, the wholesale drug business is still largely a cash flow business. As a result, large amounts of cash have to be moved internationally. However, due to anti-money laundering policies, it is not possible to (regularly) deposit and move large sums of cash within the formal financial system without generating an unusual transaction report to the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU). Underground bankers capitalize on this by offering drug traffickers a parallel payment structure. Without their services, the wholesale cocaine trade would probably be much less efficient, and therefore smaller.