Colombia’s Prosecutor General Viviane Morales said that money laundering accounts for 3% of the country’s GDP, or $8 billion, reported local media Thursday.
“The Unity of Colombian Financial Information and Analysis has made its own calculations and estimates that money laundering in our country per year is about $8 billion, equivalent to 3% of GDP,” explained Morales.
The prosecutor general stressed that money laundering has become a regressive tax paid for by all Colombians, and that the state has little capacity to fight this problem.
The president of Colombia’s banker association, Asobancaria, said that 4,000 people in the banking sector enable money laundering.
“It is one of the main sources of money laundering in this country and it is due to the fact that there is such gains for those who convert the money,” said Mercedes Cuellar.
The announcements from Morales and Cuellar were made during installation of the eleventh Pan American Congress on Money Laundering Risk and Terrorism Financing.
According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), at least $1 trillion is laundered annually worldwide using increasingly sophisticated methods of moving funds across borders.