Mexico: The Black Market in Foreign Exchange and its Relationship with Narcotics Money Laundering

The Mexican foreign exchange market plays an important role in the laundering of narcotics revenues of traffickers from that country and, to some extent, traffickers from Colombia who ship through Mexico. This market is different from many other emerging market foreign exchange structures, because a legal parallel market has existed for more than two decades. The black market, meaning unreported foreign exchange dealings, is relatively smaller (compared to the size of the economy) than in other Latin American countries, since business people have broad access to dollars in the legal, parallel market.