The Economist – Mexico City
Some US$4.4 billion, 7.6% of the more than US$58 billion that Mexicans received in remittances in 2022 are related to money laundering linked to drug trafficking, according to the report “Euphoria of remittances: exodus, money laundering and economic boom” prepared by the think tank Signos Vitales.
“We estimate that the amount observed in 2022 exceeded the long-term trajectory by up to US$15 billion. So, here we question this gap that addresses at least two phenomena: exodus in America and money laundering, closely related to drug trafficking activities,” the report explains.
Remittances received in Mexico last year amounted to US$58.497 million, an unprecedented flow. This represented an annual increase of 13.4%, according to information from the Bank of Mexico (Banxico).
The data from Banxico specify that 98.9% of remittances arrived through electronic transfers and impacted 4.9 million households in Mexico with an average remittance of US$390.
The central bank also revealed that in 2022, in seven of the 12 months there were inflows of remittances that exceeded US$5 billion.
The think tank explains that heThey reached US$4.4 billion just considering the excess of remittances in those municipalities that have coverage above 100%. That is, municipalities where 100% of households receive more than one transfer per household each month.
“It is true that this exercise only applies in cases where we can somehow control the effect of other phenomena, but it is a first approach to the magnitude of the problem, which we believe is huge and could become much more complex than expected. that now it is”, they maintain in the document.
signs that surprise
At the same time, the report highlighted surprising signs and one of them is the increase in remittances from eight US states where the Mexican population is unrepresentative.
The most emblematic case is that of Minnesota, where nearly 200,000 countrymen live, nevertheless, it ranked third in terms of number of transactions to Mexico, only behind California and Texas.
The sending of remittances from Minnesota was 8.3% of the total in 2022 and, In addition, it has had a growth of 585.3% between 2018 and 2022, according to the document.
Another alert was that in 227 municipalities the number of transfers was greater than the total number of households in that place. US$14.3 billion in remittances arrived in these municipalities. Statistically speaking, this type of phenomenon is unlikely, the report maintains.
