Word: guatemala
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...created jobs - both directly for their alleged drug-running enterprises and indirectly through businesses that federal officials say are possible fronts for laundering drug profits. "They're the source of employment," says a 30-year-old woman who grew up near La Reforma and now studies law in Guatemala City. "They're the principal investors." The woman has family in Huite and asked not to be identified for fear of reprisal. (See pictures of the narco netherworld...
...Guatemala has long been a drug transshipment point between South and North America. But only in recent years have investigators begun to see how firmly a narco-economy is taking hold there, which is always bad news for small, poor and corrupt countries like Guatemala. Experts say it's hard to know just how much the Guatemalan economy depends on drug profits, but they agree that it's a significant source of employment and capital today. If trafficking and related businesses were shut down, unemployment would skyrocket in certain parts of the country, like La Reforma, says Leonel Ruiz, second...
...economy, says Sigfrido Lee, former Vice Minister of Economy and an analyst at the Center for National Economic Investigations, a Guatemalan think tank. This indicates, he says, a likely inflow of illegal money. The U.S. government's recently released 2009 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report backs up those suspicions. Guatemala also has an unusually high number of luxury cars and high-end real estate purchases, Lee says, and buyers often pay in cash. Guatemala City has seen a boom in fancy high-rise apartment and office buildings in recent years, which authorities and analysts suspect is driven in no small...
...companies to ship melons. One of the Lorenzana brothers, Waldemar, was arrested last December for alleged weapons possession but was released soon after without being charged. A Lorenzana representative did not respond to TIME's attempts to contact the family. But last year, Waldemar wrote a letter to a Guatemala newspaper denying reports that he or his family were involved in drug trafficking. He admitted he'd once sold land to a man who then constructed a clandestine airstrip on it to transport drugs but said "that wasn't my fault...
Guatemalan authorities have apprehended dozens of suspects in recent years leaving the country with large wads of cash, often hidden under clothing or stuffed into items like shampoo bottles, book covers and diapers. Last year, the Guatemalan government confiscated $3.4 million in suspicious funds at the Guatemala City airport and sent 20 people to jail, most of them from other Central and South American countries, says Leopoldo Liu, head of the public prosecutor's office on money laundering. (See pictures of South America on LIFE.com...