Bolivian Fiscal High Called Drug-Induced
LA PAZ, Bolivia — The nation’s hard-currency reserves shot up more than 1,000% in the first month of the government’s new economic program, but economists said most of the money had come from cocaine traffickers.
The Bolivian College of Economists said most of the hard currency coming into the central bank, $104 million in the first two weeks of October, according to the government, was from drug smugglers.
It asserted that President Victor Paz Estenssoro’s decision to set the peso at a market rate was “ideal for laundering coca-dollars.”
Western diplomats estimate the cocaine trade to be worth as much as $2 billion a year and that it makes up as much as 80% of the Bolivian economy.
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