How Chinese underground banks became world’s biggest money-launderers…

The Economist: The success of Chinese money-laundering networks is due to a mixture of technical innovation, China’s trade surpluses and, most important of all, its strict capital controls, under which people may take no more than the equivalent of $50,000 a year out of the country. This combination has created the opportunity for a three-way trade that allows drug smugglers to get illicit dollars out of America (or pounds out of Britain), Chinese people to get yuan out of China, and recycles the proceeds into pesos or just about any other currency that the drug cartels want…