If you were wondering why US law enforcement pulled off a major raid of Los Angeles-area clothing wholesalers last year, here's why. FAST FASHION, the sale of cheap copies of the latest fashion trends, manufactured quickly in Mexico, and sold to hungry young American consumers, is a cash cow for retailers. The fact that its manufacture is also an environmental nightmare appears to be irrelevant to all the participants involved, but compliance officers in Los Angeles know that it is a clear and present danger to their banks.
The fast-moving pace of transactions between American fashion houses and Mexican clothing manufacturers, acting to capitalize on short-term fashion trends, masks the illicit movement of narco-profits earned in the US to Mexico, where it is eventually delivered to the cartels converted to Peso form, thereby evading Mexican restrictions on the conversion of US Dollars into local currency. Some experts refer to it as a variation on the Black Market Peso Exchange well all know, but with a twist; there's no retailer at the southern end needing greenbacks to buy US goods. the transactions appear to simply be American company payments to Mexican factories for fast fashion. Piggy-backing additional Dollars to wire transfers, and then diverting the difference to Cartel financiers smack of Trade Based Money Laundering, so I must call it an amalgam of both BMPE and TBMl to be accurate.
If you are a compliance officer at ANY American financial institution whose clients purchase goods from Mexico, you will want to check to see whether the funds headed south, through your bank, are in excess of the purchase price of the goods being bought. You should expect that it's not only fashion companies that are pulling this trick. Watch for it.
One of the primary reasons offered up by the "Investment Migration" or economic passport consultancies is the availability of your new country as a potential place for you to reside, especially if increased taxes, political instability, war, or even natural disasters, occur in your home country. Consider this a blunt warning, if you are considering moving your family to any of the five East Caribbean states that offer CBI/CIP programs, because in many cases, it's just plain dangerous to live there, due to increased crime, especially homicides, taking place there.
The current homicide rate in the United States, per 100,000 people is 6.3; in the UK it is 9.7. If you choose to relocate to SAINT KITTS, or to SAINT LUCIA, the two most popular CBI choices pushed lately by the largest passport vendors in Dubai, the rate is ten times those figures. Additionally, homicide rates in those two island nations has spiked even more in the last year and a half. If you thought Haiti was dangerous, look at the statistics for the East Caribbean states. Read the local newspapers of St. Kitts & St. Lucia online if you don't believe me.
You and your family might be in the local market, when a pair of the local chronically unemployed youth involved in drug trafficking choose to resolve their territorial disputes in the street, and you become collateral damage. In other countries, you might have survived due to prompt and effective medical attention, but here in the East Caribbean there's no ambulance speeding to your rescue, and you die on the scene. What will your family do now? They are far from home, without your guidance and support.
Please, ignore that drivel coming from the passport sales consultancies,a and DO NOT consider relocating to that sunny Caribbean isle. There is an undercurrent of danger there which your passport salesman will not tell you about, and I can tell you from personal experience that wearing a bulletproof vest in the tropics is not something you want to do by choice.