Corruption

(corruption - police) "...several studies and investigations of drug-related police corruption found on-duty police officers engaged in serious criminal activities, such as (1) conducting unconstitutional searches and seizures; (2) stealing money and/or drugs from drug dealers; (3) selling stolen drugs; (4) protecting drug operations; (5) providing false testimony; and (6) submitting false crime reports."

(corruption - police) "In addition to protecting criminals or ignoring their activities, officers involved in drug-related corruption were more likely to be actively involved in the commission of a variety of crimes, including stealing drugs and/or money from drug dealers, selling drugs, and lying under oath about illegal searches. Although profit was found to be a motive common to traditional and drug-related police corruption, New York City’s Mollen Commission identified power and vigilante justice as two additional motives for drug-related police corruption. The most commonly identified pattern of drug-related police corruption involved small groups of officers who protected and assisted each other in criminal activities, rather than the traditional patterns of non-drug-related police corruption that involved just a few isolated individuals or systemic corruption pervading an entire police department or precinct."

(corruption - police) The United Nations Drug Control Program noted the inevitable risk of drug-related police corruption in 1998, when it reported that "wherever there is a well-organized, illicit drug industry, there is also the danger of police corruption."

(corruption - flow of laundered money) In its 2007 U.S. Money Laundering Threat Assessment, the U.S. Department of the Treasury described the movement of cash smuggled from drug transactions: "Cash associated with illicit narcotics typically flows out of the United States across the southwest border into Mexico, retracing the route that illegal drugs follow when entering the United States.⁸² Upon leaving the country, cash may stay in Mexico, continue on to a number of other countries, or make a U-turn and head back into the United States as a deposit by a bank or casa de cambio. Illicit funds leaving the United States also flow into Canada, which, like Mexico, is a source of illegal narcotics."

(effect of criminal funds on governments) "The magnitude of funds under criminal control poses special threats to governments, particularly in developing countries, where the domestic security markets and capital markets are far too small to absorb such funds without quickly becoming dependent on them.¹⁶⁰ It is difficult to have a functioning democratic system when drug cartels have the means to buy protection, political support or votes at every level of government and society.¹⁶¹ In systems where a member of the legislature or judiciary, earning only a modest income, can easily gain the equivalent of some 20 months’ salary from a trafficker by making one "favourable" decision, the dangers of corruption are obvious.¹⁶²"

Corruption - Data

(2006-2007 - corruption - Afghanistan) "Afghanistan currently ranks in the second lowest percentile on the World Bank’s corruption index.²⁹³ A significant component of this index is based on the activities of corruption prone government agencies. Survey after survey reveals the Afghan perception of law enforcement and courts as among the most corrupt institutions in the country.²⁹⁴ A 2006 poll by the Asia Foundation found that 77 per cent of Afghans believed corruption was a problem at the national level.²⁹⁵"

(2002 - corruption in Colombia) "Colombia has suffered the tragic consequences of endemic theft by politicians and public officials for decades. Entwined with the production and trafficking of illegal drugs, this behaviour exacerbated underdevelopment and lawlessness in the countryside, where a brutal war continues to claim the lives of some 3,500 civilians a year. A World Bank survey released in February 2002 found that bribes are paid in 50 per cent of all state contracts.²⁷ Another World Bank report estimates the cost of corruption in Colombia at US $2.6 billion annually, the equivalent of 60 per cent of the country’s debt.²⁸"

(2000 - corruption in Colombia) "The Presidential Programme Against Corruption in Colombia specifically addresses ‘narco-corruption’.³⁶ Colombia, with a capacity to produce 580 tonnes of pure cocaine in 2000,³⁷ is particularly poisoned by the interplay of narcotics and violence, with an estimated one million people internally displaced as a result of battles for territorial control by rebel groups and paramilitary forces. ‘The corruptive effect of this kind of profit is devastating, since it has penetrated to perverse levels in the judiciary and the political system,’ the official report of the Presidential Programme concluded, adding that the rapid accumulation of wealth from illegal drugs ‘has fostered codes and behaviours which promote corruption, fast money and the predominance of private welfare over general interest’."

(1999 - corruption in Colombia and Central America) "Another problem occurs when officials turn a blind eye to a narcotics trade that looms large in the region. 'Central America has become the meat in the sandwich' - as a trans-shipment point, storehouse and money laundering centre - in the drug traffic from Colombia to the US, said Costa Rican parliamentarian Belisario Solano. The Costa Rican Defence Ministry estimates that between 50 and 70 tonnes of cocaine travel through Costa Rica to the US every year."

(1998 - corruption in Colombia) "In 1998, DEA reported that drug-related corruption existed in all branches of the [Colombian] government, within the prison system, and in the military... In November 1998, U.S. Customs and DEA personnel searched a Colombian Air Force aircraft in Florida and found 415 kilograms of cocaine and 6 kilograms of heroin."

(1993-1997 - corruption - police) On average, half of all police officers convicted as a result of FBI-led corruption cases between 1993 and 1997 were convicted for drug-related offenses.

(2009 - economics - opium income and the Taliban) "The Taliban’s principal and most lucrative source of income in Afghanistan is its control of the opium trade. The Taliban have long profited off of the ten percent ushr tax levied on opium farmers, an additional tax on the traffickers, and a per-kilogram transit tariff charged to the truckers who transport the product.¹⁵² In recent years, however, they have been “taking a page from the warlords’ playbook,” and regional and local Taliban commanders have been demanding “protection money from the drug traffickers who smuggle goods through their territory.”¹⁵³ A 2007 analysis by the Jamestown Foundation described “arrangements whereby drug traffickers provide money, vehicles and subsistence to Taliban units in return for protection.”¹⁵⁴ In addition, at even higher Taliban command levels, “senior leadership in Quetta are paid regular installments from narcotics kingpins as a general fee for operating in Taliban controlled areas.”¹⁵⁵ Through these various forms of taxation and extortion, the Taliban have been estimated to earn nearly $300 million a year from the opium trade.¹⁵⁶"

(2009 - economics - money laundering and the value of the global opiate market) "Of the US$ 65 billion turnover of the global market for opiates, only 5-10 per cent (US$ 3-5 billion) are estimated to be laundered by informal banking systems. The rest is laundered through legal trade activities (including smuggling of legal goods into Afghanistan) and the banking system."

(2008 - economics - money laundering and gross revenue of Mexican DTOs) "Mexico also remains a hub for money laundering. It is estimated that DTOs’ [drug trafficking organizations] annual gross revenue ranges between $15-30 billion from illicit drug sales in the U.S. Most of these proceeds are returned from the U.S. primarily through bulk currency shipments and laundered through legitimate Mexican businesses."

Corruption - Research

(corruption - police) The Mollen Commission was appointed to investigate corruption in the New York City Police Department. The Commission "found that police corruption, brutality, and violence were present in every high-crime precinct with an active narcotics trade that it studied, all of which have predominantly minority populations. It found disturbing patterns of police corruption and brutality, including stealing from drug dealers, engaging in unlawful searches, seizures, and car stops, dealing and using drugs, lying in order to justify unlawful searches and arrests and to forestall complaints of abuse, and indiscriminate beating of innocent and guilty alike."

(corruption in Mexico) "Mexico's police and armed services are known to be contaminated by multimillion dollar bribes from the transnational narco-trafficking business. Though the problem is not as pervasive in the military as it is in the police, it is widely considered to have attained the status of a national security threat."

(corruption in specific U.S. cities) A 1998 report by the General Accounting Office cited specific examples of publicly disclosed drug-related police corruption in the following cities: Atlanta, Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Los Angeles, Miami, New Orleans, New York, Philadelphia, Savannah, and Washington, DC.