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Title: Hidden Fortunes: Drug Money/The Cartels and the Elite World Banks by Eduardo Varela-Cid, Jennifer L. Jensen, John B. Jensen ISBN: 0-935016-93-7 Publisher: Hudson Street Press Pub. Date: December, 1999 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $22.50

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Average Customer Rating: 3.33 (3 reviews)

Rating: 2
Summary: Not organized, not current.
Comment: If you are looking for the latest and greatest in a long series of banking industry troubles with Mexico's drug cartels, then avoid this book. The book is divided into two parts, one focuses on mostly events of the 1980's and Mexico drug trafficking and secondly, the other discusses banking regulation and money laundering. Although the book dicussess in depth many of the problems associated with the criminalization of drug laws and concludes legalization may be the best route to take away the profits from the illict drug trade; the book ironically, endorses draconian banking regulation as a means to ferret out drug proceeds. Clearly, the book was written durning two differnt periods and thrown together hapazardly. The section on the Mexican cartels and money laundering do not mesh well. Avoid this book.

Rating: 4
Summary: Citibank, Boston Bank, Guardians of the Drug Trade
Comment: Recently when Raul Salinas -- brother of Mexican ex-President Carlos Salinas de Gortari -- was caught sending hundreds of millions of dollars out of his country, the money trail led to Citibank in New York.

Citibank, in turn, was passing the loot along to prestigious banks in Switzerland and Lichtenstein. It appears that the chief executives of the various banks in this laundering opereation were all friends. Understandably -- this kind of money is the basis for a very good friendship.

But the money comes from the Drug Trade, responsible for the devastation of societies and families world-wide. Yet it matters not to the elite banks where the money comes from, only where it ends up: in their accounts.

What makes this book different is the knowledgeable perspective of the author, Eduardo Varela Cid, a well-kown Congressman from Argentina and also a former Vice Pres. of Latin American Parliament.Varela Cid co-authored many of the anti-drug laws currently in place in many South American countries.

Varela-Cid's good friend Lara Bonilla, a Colombian Minister, took seven cartel bullets to his head as a reward for his efforts to extradite the Drug Kings from Colombia to stand trial in the USA. This is what can happen to a fighter - a politician or a journalist - outside the spheres of power, beyond the protection of the elite banks and the cartels.

The primary thesis of this book is that the elite banks are a critical problem -- because no big business can run efficiently without them. Particularly an immense business like the world Drug Trade which counts on the banking system to pay its employees world-wide, and get illicit money back into legal channels.

And yet it is not the smaller, unknown banks that are involved, but the major banks known to all of us; the ones in which you and I keep our money.

Varela Cid gives this book his all. He is a fighter who took on the cartels in South America daily: on televison, in newspapers, from Parliament --wherever he could find a forum.

This book gives names dates and places. It is a direct challenge to the banks and the cartels, to the individuals who run these operations.

Read it!

Rating: 4
Summary: The Elite Banks are the critical problem, not the solution
Comment: Eduardo Varela-Cid, a former Vice President of Latin American Parliament from 1990-1995, digs deep inside the Latin American and World Drug Trade, and follows the money trail to Citibank, among others. The banks are a critical part of the problem -- they allow the drug trade to flourish by providing the financial machinery necessary to big business. When the banks could actually be a part of the solution; they are in the best positiion to deal a crippling blow to the cartels.

This book is highly interesting for its choice of events, anecdotes, and riveting analyses -- there is a pervasive sense of irony as well in the face of the alleged "war on drugs" staged by the USA and others.

HIDDEN FORTUNES is an insiders account, told from the ground level, from the trenches. It brings forward all of the hypocrisy prevalent in the current relationships between the world political and financial powers that profit off of this immense business, and the cartels.

The opening chapter on Columbia is especially good and dramatic in its description of the strange and tragic life of the young children -- the sicarios -- who pull the triggers in the streets for their bosses.

The drug business is among the most lucrative in the world -- truly an international, world-class mega-power, and this book gets deep inside it. It is risky.

Highly recommended.