January 20, 2011

http://www.islandcrisis.net/2011/01/money-laundering-amounts-8-7-million-dollars-in-colombia/

BOGOTA (BNO NEWS) – Money laundering from drug trafficking in Colombia amounted to about 8.7 million dollars per year, an administration official said Wednesday.

There were 42,590 suspicious transactions between January 2006 and December 2010, according to the Financial Information and Analysis Unit (UIAF) of the Finance Ministry.

The figure ammounts for 3 percent of Colombia’s GDP, according to local newspaper El Tiempo.

Money laundering, which takes illicit money and try to clean it when introduced into the legal market, pushes up inflation, said UIAF director Luis Edmundo Suarez.

Colombia is the world’s largest producer of cocaine.