Last year Ernesto arrived at a car dealership and picked one vehicle without asking for the price. Weeks later he went to the same agency and, after a brief tour, he bought another car. He did not ask the salesperson what were car features or if they had it in another color. Soon he returned to the same agency and made another purchase without inspecting the vehicle.
Therefore, the sales agent issued a "warning notice" and informed the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) of Mexico's Tax Agency (SAT) that "the customer bought multiple vehicles in a very short period of time, without asking about the cost, conditions or type of vehicle."
A case like this, that could be related to money laundering, is detected every 15 minutes in Mexico. From September 1, 2013, when the new regulations of the Federal Law for the Prevention and Identification of Transactions with Illicit Resources entered into force, until May 31, 2015, businesses and individuals issued 55,117 warnings to report suspicious performing transactions under so-called Anti-Money Laundering Act, according to information obtained via the Transparency Law.
Most of these warnings are related to the use of service and prepaid cards, as well as credit cards issued by non-financial institutions, such as those offered by department stores. Nearly 30,000 such alerts were sent to the tax authority.
Unlike debit or payroll cards, prepaid cards are not linked to a checking or savings accounts, and they can be purchased at department, convenience and grocery stores, among other businesses.
Angélica Ortiz Dorantes, a specialist in money laundering prevention, explained that customers can recharge prepaid cards with up to 46,215 pesos (US$2,812) a month without being flagged.
Customers can also be flagged if their expenses do not correspond to their economic profile, if they refuse to provide an ID when making a purchase, if they show false documents to carry out an operation, if they show strong interest in making the purchase as quickly as possible, if they make several purchases in a short period or if they try to bribe or blackmail to do an irregular transaction.
Since September 2013 the Anti-Money Laundering Act requires employers and individuals engaged in 17 "vulnerable activities" to report suspicious transactions to the Ministry of Finance (SHCP). These activities include sales of vehicles and art, games and sweepstakes, armor-plating, real estate sales or leases, among others.
Ortiz Dorantes, author of the book “El delito del lavado de dinero” (The crime of money laundering) says that the law "is very hard and is affecting the commercial sector" because the authority has overloaded it with a series of obligations which in some cases are useless and do not contribute to prevent money laundering.