Dominican Republic

The Dominican Republic occupies the eastern two-thirds of the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, which it shares with Haiti to the west. A small country with a large economy and a great income inequality among its population, the Dominican Republic is also a significant exporter of illegal narcotics, and Dominican drug cartels have been prominent in the American narcotics scene for decades.

Most of the drugs trafficked through the Dominican Republic originate in Colombia. The Republic's banking system makes money laundering easy, and many Colombian drug traffickers use the island to clean their money while shipping cocaine to North America and Europe. Perhaps a 10th of the cocaine in the United States comes through the Dominican Republic, and some estimates have placed it much higher. Much of ...