Where did these narco dollars come from?
This is the key question for all concerned – including the Venezuelan stock broking fraternity. If the source of the funds was from drug sales in Venezuela then it is highly likely that the transactions were originally made in Venezuelan bolívares, which cannot be easily converted into US dollars – unless the perpetrators have an institutional setting such as the stock brokerage houses or some other currency exchange mechanism. Capital flight from Venezuela since 2003 has been done via the “swap market”. The method has been to buy Venezuelan government debt in bolivares and “swapped” for an equivalent bond in US dollars, using the parallel or “permuta” exchange rate. This was done using a Venezuelan financial broker who deposited the dollar funds in a US bank account from his/her own account. The alternative was to exchange the bolivares illegally into cash dollars and smuggle them out of the country as appears to have been the case in this money laundering conspiracy, based on informa
