AZMEX POLICY 17-10-12

AZMEX POLICY 17 OCT 2012


SHCP head discounts risk of "narco-economy"
The country is not at risk of becoming a narco-economy, said
Secretary of Finance, Jose Antonio Meade
http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/primera/40559.html
Wednesday October 17, 2012
Jorge Ramos Perez | El Universal

Jose Antonio Meade, Secretary of Finance and Public Credit, said
Mexico has shielded to prevent it from becoming an attractive
destination for money laundering and ruled out the risk of becoming
narco-economy.

Interviewed in Los Pinos, following enactment of the signing by
President Felipe Calderon of the new Federal Law on the Prevention
and Identification of Operations Illicit Resources, the finance
minister stressed the importance of this new legal instrument.
- Do not we risk being a narco-economy? -Asked the secretary of the
Treasury.
-No, by no means he answered.

"Again, today the Mexican economy, not only in its financial sector,
but in the real sector, has a good legal and administrative framework
that allows us to be confident that Mexico will not be an attractive
destination for money laundering," he Secretary.

In enacting this law, President Felipe Calderón declared that this
instrument can be pasted "right in the heart" of the crime industry.

He agreed that Mexico suffers a serious problem regarding the
performance of crime and insecurity generated by the population, and
thus from the beginning of his administration took a firm decision
with all the resources of the state to deal with such criminal
organizations.

In a ceremony on the steps of the Miguel Alemán residence of Los
Pinos, Calderon reiterated that his administration was fought crime
"outside any political calculation and any vision or short-term
interest."

Meade recalled that, according to sources, the amount of money
laundering in Mexico is around 10 billion dollars.

The law provides for restrictions to which it must be secured
conducting commercial and financial transactions which could be used
to launder money, as the practice of gambling, contests or
sweepstakes, and the marketing of credit cards or prepaid, as in the
case of department stores.

It also limits the granting of loans or credits, construction,
development and sale of real estate, the sale of works of art,
precious stones, as well as the acquisition of vehicles, aircraft and
yachts.

"These measures will prevent crime groups and wash their dirty money
to accumulate fortunes lawful offend and offend both to citizens from
illegal and criminal activities, as they develop," said Calderon.

President Calderón said that the law considers the creation of the
Special Unit for Financial Analysis, assigned to the Attorney
General's Office.



Note: some of us continue to believe that the PRI will use a heavy
hand in dealing with threats to the PRI.

Op-ed.

Peña and the new security strategy
The President-elect and his team have to evaluate very closely the
good and bad that they received from Felipe Calderon.
Leo Zuckermann
http://www.excelsior.com.mx/index.php?
m=nota&seccion=opinion&cat=11&id_nota=864779

Changes of government are an extraordinary opportunity to change the
failed strategies. This is the case, I think, the issue of security.
However, it also runs the risk of throwing away the positive things
that will inherit the outgoing administration.

Peña and his team have to evaluate very closely what went right and
wrong from Calderon. They need not discover the black wire starting
from scratch. I think, for example, they would have to keep the
Federal Police has been one of the few successes of this
administration. After six years of a large investment of money and
effort, today we have a federal police force, still inadequate, but
with best practice and preparation than the vast majority of state
and municipal police forces in the country.

However, in recent months the Federal Police has also been shown that
several problems. The killings at the airport of Mexico City and the
ambush at Tres Marias suggest that some criminals have infiltrated
this police force. Therefore, as social activists argue security
experts and Maria Elena Morera Ernesto Lopez Portillo, the next
government will have to work on refining the Federal Police and the
establishment of internal and external controls to punish
malpractices and abuses of power.

Calderon's government focused on the Federal Police in the
construction of institutions dedicated to providing security.
Unfortunately sidestepped other equally important in the whole chain
of enforcement of security and justice. Nothing did, for example, to
reform and strengthen the Attorney General's Office and federal
prosecutors. Many complained that the President's judges let loose
the criminals caught his administration. Little said about that the
judges had to release them because prosecutors had cases that were
unsustainable. In this sense, Peña will have to work very hard to
improve the performance of the PGR.

And will have to do it because the deadline for entry into force of
the new adversarial system of justice is due during the presidency of
Peña. By 2016, both the common law justice as federal conducted
through oral trials. Government ministries, therefore, must be ready
and prepared to present their cases orally. The problem is that, as
stated by Morera, leaving the lag in the new accusatory system "is
huge."

As is the huge backlog in prison. Prisons, needless to say, are a
disaster in Mexico: overcrowded and controlled by criminals. Leaks
and internal killings are commonplace. Although the Calderon
administration is opening new federal criminal, Morera says they can
not move prisoners under federal jurisdiction because they are not
yet sentenced. They are not because the administration of justice in
Mexico is slower than a turtle.

On Sunday, Reforma reported that, according to the document brief
analysis of Public Security, the new government will focus its
strategy Peña "reduce violence." The goal is to lose 50% of homicides
and kidnappings in the first year of management, "moving from a
national rate of 24 to at least 12 murders per 100,000 inhabitants
[...] and two thousand 337 thousand 668 kidnappings".

If true this information, it seems perfect that the new strategy to
reduce violence aimed at two of the three crimes that most offend
society: murder and kidnapping. These would include extortion.

What worries me is the goal that seems very aggressive and therefore
unlikely to be met. I do not see how the government could lose 50% of
murders and kidnappings in 12 months. In Mexico it took us 14 years,
from 1993 to 2007, to lower the rate of 19 homicides per 100,000
inhabitants to eight. The goal of the course paper Peña is
comparatively a figure "very risky" in the words of Morera. I agree.
It goes well Peña and his team in both raise the bar up. Morera
recommended rightly "to first see what and who counts" to set goals
that are achievable.