Mexico City, Mexico — The Ministry of Finance is strengthening institutional actions to prevent money laundering through the use of casinos by alleged organized crime groups.
The Ministry of Finance and Public Credit, together with the Security Cabinet, in an investigation that has been ongoing for months, identified 13 casinos where cash operations, international flows and the use of unsupervised digital platforms were detected.
Due to their high financial risk, they were listed as blocked legal entities to protect users and prevent these spaces from being used by organized crime.
As a result, behaviors allegedly consistent with international money laundering typologies were identified in establishments with a presence in Jalisco, Nuevo León, Sinaloa, Sonora, Baja California, State of Mexico, Chiapas and Mexico City, according to the patterns detected in the financial analysis.
Some of these establishments operated with multimillion-dollar cash transactions, transfers to countries such as the United States, Romania, Albania, Malta and Panama, as well as through digital platforms, which facilitated the dispersion of illicit resources, their concealment, and their reintegration into the Mexican and international financial system.
Additionally, it was identified that the digital platforms used people with economic profiles that did not match the amount of money received, such as housewives, students, retirees, and the unemployed, who in exchange for a percentage transferred all the funds to the real owners, legitimizing the income apparently obtained from games.
Based on these findings, the UIF (Unidad de Inteligencia Financiera) will file the corresponding complaints with the Attorney General of the Republic (FGR) and notify the Federal Tax Prosecutor’s Office, in order to follow up on possible crimes of operations with resources of illicit origin (money laundering), criminal association and tax-related crimes.
These actions reaffirm the commitment to international cooperation to prevent the use of the financial system for illicit purposes, in collaboration with FinCEN and OFAC of the United States Department of the Treasury, and in compliance with the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) Recommendations for combating money laundering.
Following the Ministry’s report, President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo said she deems it necessary to update the law in order to regulate digital casinos, since new technologies allow this new way of betting and can lend itself to illicit activities such as money laundering.
She said that investigations are continuing to track financial resources linked to these crimes, as part of the National Security Strategy.
“All investigations, both those conducted by the Tax Administration Service and these investigations being carried out by the UIF, have a legal basis. There is nothing to do with a political matter,” she clarified.
The Secretary of Security and Citizen Protection, Omar García Harfuch, explained that the systematic work of investigation and financial analysis aims to dismantle the activities used for money laundering.
Authorities detected patterns of risk and tax irregularities, unusual operations, and transnational financial links that affected the integrity of the financial system.
The UIF was responsible for integrating the reports of unusual transactions and conducting the analysis that identified financial networks linked to the alleged illicit activities.
He said the investigation was based on the banking, tax and corporate integration in the gambling sector.
They detected patterns to hide resources, such as casinos with cash operations and tax simulation, with flows of foreign origin, as well as digital casinos or unsupervised technological platforms that made online payments to Malta and the United Arab Emirates.
The institution notified the Federal Tax Prosecutor’s Office of possible tax-related crimes and omissions in tax compliance matters and filed complaints with the FGR for operations with resources of illicit origin and related crimes.
In addition, it carried out the temporary suspension of activities in physical establishments that violated the law, as well as the blocking of electronic pages of virtual casinos and bank accounts linked to irregular operations.
Going forward, they will implement early detection , predictive models based on artificial intelligence, and new sectoral typologies to identify unusual behaviors in order to prevent impacts on the financial system. He highlighted international cooperation with institutions such as the United States Treasury Department.
The Federal Attorney for Tax Matters, Grisel Galeano García, explained that the suspended casinos and platforms use individuals through deception or identity theft, especially young people, students, workers, housewives or retirees, who do not handle large amounts of money.
They receive prepaid cards or winning codes with money of unknown origin that can be used in physical or online casinos and register large winnings for the person, which are transferred to accounts in tax havens, where it is laundered and returns to our country as legal earnings.
“That process was repeated hundreds or thousands of times in different casinos and digital platforms. Each operation seemed normal, but together they formed a systematic mechanism to circumvent the law and launder money.”
