Whack-a-mole Drug War: Mexico Trumpets Cash Seizures, But Figures Don't Impress

From 'InSight Crime' 

Mexico Trumpets Cash Seizures, But Figures Don't Impress: "Mexican authorities boast of having confiscated more than $260 million from organized crime in nearly five years of the Calderon administration, but the number pales in comparison to the overall flow of illicit cash. ...

However, $266 million is a drop in the bucket when one considers that up to $39 billion in illicit cash from the drug trade flows into the country on an annual basis, according to U.S. government estimates. Indeed, the entire haul represents just 0.6 percent of the high-end estimate of a single year’s drug revenues in Mexico.

The numbers are less impressive still when one considers that more than $200 million of the seized cash came in a single confiscation in 2007, at the house of Chinese national Zhenli Ye Gon. Without that seizure, the proportion of illicit cash nabbed by government officials would drop to closer to a tenth of a percent of the total."