The Tribune

By AVA TURNQUEST

Tribune Chief Reporter

aturnquest@tribunemedia.net

REGIONAL strategy has shifted to finance as the new frontier in the war against transnational organised crime, according to a top US commander.

US Marine General John Kelly, commander of US Southern Command, said law enforcement and drug interdiction efforts are now “all about the money” as an effective and safer method of crippling cartels.

Commander Kelly spoke exclusively to The Tribune at the close of the fifth Caribbean Nations Security Conference (CANSEC), where military and civilian leaders from 21 countries met to discuss best practices, information sharing, and interoperability to reduce crime threats to sovereignty.

“When you think of law enforcement and drug interdiction you tend to think of people with guns and policemen and soldiers maybe,” he said, “but it’s really all about the money. The amounts are astronomical.”

Commander Kelly said: “When we seize money we don’t count it, we weigh it. Think of a ton of money and then take an American dollar bill and how much that weighs. So I think the real new (frontier), most of us feel more and more that it’s going after that money.

“We know where the money is, we know where the billions are, and some countries have laws that restrict investigation of money by other countries. They haven’t done that intentionally, it’s just banking laws are such that it is hard to investigate into those bank accounts.”

Drug cartels use these restrictions to their advantage when storing the proceeds of crime, according to Commander Kelly, who pointed to the efforts of the United Nations, the European Union, and individual countries like the United States to change this.

“Going to individual countries and saying we know that there are vast amounts of money from drug cartels in your country, work with us so that we can get our hands on that money,” he said, “because if you’re a drug cartel with $10bn dollars in the bank and the next day legally it’s seized by a country - you’re out of business.

“So I think really it’s the money that is the next frontier because unless you can convince people to stop taking cocaine and drugs, you can lower the demand but you can’t eliminate it.”

He added: “To identify a drug cartel’s bank account and then take that money legally, no one gets hurt, no one gets shot, it’s hard to intimidate the bank because the bank’s not really doing it the government’s doing it, and wouldn’t it be great if your country identified a bank account with $10bn dollars and then legally seized it? That’s $10bn dollars your politicians can spend on education, but I think it’s all about the money and cooperation and all of the countries that are cooperating with each other, not just the United States.”