Laundering Scheme Detailed by U.S.

In a secretly videotaped conversation with undercover customs agents, a Mexican banker told of handling transactions for officials in the Mexican attorney general’s office who receive protection money from drug traffickers, according to a government affidavit filed in Operation Casablanca, the biggest drug money laundering case in U.S. history.

The banker, Alfredo Garcia Suarez, was arrested two weeks ago in Las Vegas along with an associate from Banca Serfin, one of Mexico’s largest banking houses.

So far, more than 100 people have been indicted in the Customs Service’s money-laundering sting, including 26 Mexican and Venezuelan bankers. Banca Serfin and Bancomer, another major Mexican bank, also have been charged.

Suarez, who directed Banca Serfin’s stock market operations in Mexico City, met with undercover customs agents in Sante Fe Springs on March 6 to discuss collaborating in laundering drug trafficking proceeds, according to the affidavit.

Using a storefront office equipped with hidden cameras and microphones, the undercover agents passed themselves off as money launderers, taking assignments for the drug cartels in Cali, Colombia, and Juarez, Mexico.

During a conversation with the agents, Suarez allegedly boasted that he handled accounts for unnamed VIPs in the Procuraduria General de la Republica, the Mexican attorney general’s office, who, he said, received protection money from Mexican drug traffickers.

He also said he performed financial transactions for the traffickers when they wound up in prison, according to the document.

At another meeting with undercover agents on April 21, the affidavit said, Suarez said he knew of a Mexican general who had money in New York and Mexico City that needed to be laundered.

The general, who was not named in the document, was described as a member of a wealthy Mexican family who had previously lost money he tried to launder through an American lawyer.

As a result of their talks with the undercover agents, Suarez and an associate at Banca Serfin, Hector Mourra Lozano, agreed to set up straw accounts at the bank, the affidavit said.

The pair were arrested in Las Vegas, where they were to deliver bank checks representing more than $528,000 in laundered funds to the undercover agents.