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 Constantine
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 How a Mexican Drug Cartel Makes Its Billions  1
#16384871 - 06/15/12 01:13 PM (10 months, 27 days ago) |
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http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/17/magazine/how-a-mexican-drug-cartel-makes-its-billions.html?ref=magazine
One afternoon last August, at a hospital on the outskirts of Los Angeles, a former beauty queen named Emma Coronel gave birth to a pair of heiresses. The twins, who were delivered at 3:50 and 3:51, respectively, stand to inherit some share of a fortune that Forbes estimates is worth a billion dollars. Coronel’s husband, who was not present for the birth, is a legendary tycoon who overcame a penurious rural childhood to establish a wildly successful multinational business. If Coronel elected to leave the entry for “Father” on the birth certificates blank, it was not because of any dispute over patrimony. More likely, she was just skittish about the fact that her husband, Joaquín Guzmán, is the C.E.O. of Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel, a man the Treasury Department recently described as the world’s most powerful drug trafficker. Guzmán’s organization is responsible for as much as half of the illegal narcotics imported into the United States from Mexico each year; he may well be the most-wanted criminal in this post-Bin Laden world. But his bride is a U.S. citizen with no charges against her. So authorities could only watch as she bundled up her daughters and slipped back across the border to introduce them to their dad.
Known as El Chapo for his short, stocky frame, Guzmán is 55, which in narco-years is about 150. He is a quasi-mythical figure in Mexico, the subject of countless ballads, who has outlived enemies and accomplices alike, defying the implicit bargain of a life in the drug trade: that careers are glittering but brief and always terminate in prison or the grave. When Pablo Escobar was Chapo’s age, he had been dead for more than a decade. In fact, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration, Chapo sells more drugs today than Escobar did at the height of his career. To some extent, this success is easily explained: as Hillary Clinton acknowledged several years ago, America’s “insatiable demand for illegal drugs” is what drives the clandestine industry. It’s no accident that the world’s biggest supplier of narcotics and the world’s biggest consumer of narcotics just happen to be neighbors. “Poor Mexico,” its former president Porfirio Díaz is said to have remarked. “So far from God and so close to the United States.”
The Sinaloa cartel can buy a kilo of cocaine in the highlands of Colombia or Peru for around $2,000, then watch it accrue value as it makes its way to market. In Mexico, that kilo fetches more than $10,000. Jump the border to the United States, and it could sell wholesale for $30,000. Break it down into grams to distribute retail, and that same kilo sells for upward of $100,000 — more than its weight in gold. And that’s just cocaine. Alone among the Mexican cartels, Sinaloa is both diversified and vertically integrated, producing and exporting marijuana, heroin and methamphetamine as well.
Estimating the precise scale of Chapo’s empire is tricky, however. Statistics on underground economies are inherently speculative: cartels don’t make annual disclosures, and no auditor examines their books. Instead, we’re left with back-of-the-envelope extrapolations based on conjectural data, much of it supplied by government agencies that may have bureaucratic incentives to overplay the problem.
So in a spirit of empirical humility, we shouldn’t accept as gospel the estimate, from the Justice Department, that Colombian and Mexican cartels reap $18 billion to $39 billion from drug sales in the United States each year. (That range alone should give you pause.) Still, even if you take the lowest available numbers, Sinaloa emerges as a titanic player in the global black market. In the sober reckoning of the RAND Corporation, for instance, the gross revenue that all Mexican cartels derive from exporting drugs to the United States amounts to only $6.6 billion. By most estimates, though, Sinaloa has achieved a market share of at least 40 percent and perhaps as much as 60 percent, which means that Chapo Guzmán’s organization would appear to enjoy annual revenues of some $3 billion — comparable in terms of earnings to Netflix or, for that matter, to Facebook.
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imachavel
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Re: How a Mexican Drug Cartel Makes Its Billions [Re: Constantine]
#16385062 - 06/15/12 01:47 PM (10 months, 27 days ago) |
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holy shit
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theonlysun81
Long Time Lurker, Recent Member
Registered: 05/11/12
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Re: How a Mexican Drug Cartel Makes Its Billions [Re: imachavel]
#16385127 - 06/15/12 02:00 PM (10 months, 27 days ago) |
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Richest man on earth am i right?
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 dwpineal
Psychedelic Artist
Registered: 07/20/06
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Re: How a Mexican Drug Cartel Makes Its Billions [Re: theonlysun81]
#16385303 - 06/15/12 02:39 PM (10 months, 27 days ago) |
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MaxFresh
I made this
Registered: 03/03/03
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Re: How a Mexican Drug Cartel Makes Its Billions [Re: theonlysun81]
#16386342 - 06/15/12 06:33 PM (10 months, 26 days ago) |
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Quote:
theonlysun81 said:
Richest man on earth am i right?
Not even close to being right.
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46 and 2
Zen Masta
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Re: How a Mexican Drug Cartel Makes Its Billions [Re: MaxFresh]
#16387736 - 06/16/12 12:04 AM (10 months, 26 days ago) |
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You guys should see the pictures of the houses they bust of druglords in Mexico. Some of them have arsenals of gold plated weapons with gems and diamonds on them as well as private, exotic menageries. That's just the tip of the iceberg when you see how far the money takes them. Crazy when you think about all the money leaving our country to fund these fat cunts overseas, which could be earning and maintaining dollars on the home front.
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Even if it seems certain that you will lose, retaliate. Neither wisdom or technique has a place in this. A real man does not think of victory or defeat. He plunges recklessly towards an irrational death. By doing this, you will awaken from your dreams. - Tsunetomo Yamamoto
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Awebig
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Re: How a Mexican Drug Cartel Makes Its Billions [Re: Constantine]
#16388421 - 06/16/12 02:40 AM (10 months, 26 days ago) |
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Woulda been funny if the body of the origional post was simply a link to the forum user list, lol.
"Guzmán is 55, which in narco-years is about 150" Also funny,
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InsertName
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Re: How a Mexican Drug Cartel Makes Its Billions [Re: theonlysun81]
#16388669 - 06/16/12 04:02 AM (10 months, 26 days ago) |
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Quote:
theonlysun81 said:
Richest man on earth am i right?
Richest man on earth is Carlos Slim, another mexican  even more rich and powerful than silly Bill Gates
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CLIT
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Re: How a Mexican Drug Cartel Makes Its Billions [Re: InsertName]
#16388996 - 06/16/12 06:54 AM (10 months, 26 days ago) |
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1 kilo is only a little over 2 pounds, right?
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ToiletDuk
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Re: How a Mexican Drug Cartel Makes Its Billions [Re: CLIT]
#16389008 - 06/16/12 07:03 AM (10 months, 26 days ago) |
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2.2 lbs to be exact.
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CLIT
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Re: How a Mexican Drug Cartel Makes Its Billions [Re: ToiletDuk]
#16429395 - 06/24/12 07:01 AM (10 months, 18 days ago) |
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I'm still trying to find out how a kilo of cocaine can only go for 2 grand, yet a kilo of coca tea (the prices I've seen) can go for 200 bucks. I'm expecting a kilo would be a bit more pricey but I guess if they get it from poverty stricken parts of Colombia or Peru where I'm sure the exchange rate for 2 grand U.S. dollars is worth a lot more in those countries, then that would make sense. I was making assumptions that purchase of cocaine would be in poverty stricken parts of those countries because these plants are usually handled by poor locals living in mountains. Am I right? It's like farmers are usually poor and the ones that get rich are the grocery stores selling what the farmers sold them, wholesale. Is this how the cartel works?
Edited by CLIT (06/24/12 07:13 AM)
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Rail_Gun
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Re: How a Mexican Drug Cartel Makes Its Billions [Re: CLIT]
#16429468 - 06/24/12 07:47 AM (10 months, 18 days ago) |
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In Peru that Kilo of coca leaves is probably worth less than $2. You're missing the point. You are an American buying a product in America. They're gouging you because they can, especially with a brown market product that may or may not be legal depending on the mood of the customs agent.
If weed were legal it could be as cheap as hay for a 50lb bale. It is the fact that it's illicit that gives it any value. And the further from the source of production you are the greater the mark up.
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CLIT
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Re: How a Mexican Drug Cartel Makes Its Billions [Re: Rail_Gun]
#16434128 - 06/25/12 04:22 AM (10 months, 17 days ago) |
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The company selling the coca tea is from Peru (surprise?) and sells a box of 100 tea bags for 30 to 40 bucks. I think they are familiar with how much its worth in the U.S. so they take advantage of this knowledge. Either the company has connections in the U.S., thus knowing how to price the product accordingly. The shipping and handling is what really kills as well. If the locals find out that a kilo of cocaine bought for 2 grand is turned into six figures in the U.S., they may inflate their wholesale price.
Quote:
Rail_Gun said:
In Peru that Kilo of coca leaves is probably worth less than $2. You're missing the point. You are an American buying a product in America. They're gouging you because they can, especially with a brown market product that may or may not be legal depending on the mood of the customs agent.
If weed were legal it could be as cheap as hay for a 50lb bale. It is the fact that it's illicit that gives it any value. And the further from the source of production you are the greater the mark up.
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Rail_Gun
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Re: How a Mexican Drug Cartel Makes Its Billions [Re: CLIT]
#16434395 - 06/25/12 07:26 AM (10 months, 17 days ago) |
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I looked in to the economics of buying the leaf material to extract cocaine from them. It ended up coming to about $650/oz of pure if I remember right. I just could never work up the nerve to place the order. Theoretically if they did a controlled delivery on it they could charge you with a few keys of coke. The leaf matter is the same legally as powder.
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Edited by Alan Rockefeller (06/25/12 11:00 AM)
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