By Andrew Willis
Bloomberg
Colombia is investigating the possible involvement of gold trading firms and a Miami refinery in a cocaine money-laundering scheme that’s distorting the country’s trade data, according to the tax and customs agency.
As much as $3.3 billion of gold was smuggled into Colombia in the past two years from countries including Venezuela, Panama, Mexico and Chile, said Juan Ricardo Ortega, who heads the agency known as the DIAN and is assisting an investigation started by the Attorney General’s office in 2011. The contraband metal allegedly was sent via trading firms including CI Goldex SA to the U.S. and Switzerland and bought at inflated prices with drug money, he said. Goldex denies any wrongdoing.
“It’s money laundering, a way of bringing back dollars,” Ortega said in a May 19 interview at a Bogota restaurant where he was accompanied by bodyguards. The DIAN and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration are assisting in the probe, he said.