7/31/2019 Executive Summary of 'Mexico: Illicit Financial Flows,Macroeconomic Imbalances,and the Underground Economy'

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Executive Summary

This study provides estimates of illicit nancial ows (IFFs) from Mexico over the period 1970 2010

and examines the underlying drivers and dynamics in the context of a simulation model. Since thedata needed to run the simulation model are only available for the period 1971-2008, the analysis of

the factors driving illicit ows is conned to this shorter period.

In our denition, money is deemed to be illicit if the source, use or movement of the funds is

illegal. All ow estimates are based on cross-border transfers of illicit money and do not take into

account illicit money being laundered inside the country. Moreover, illicit ows resulting from drug

trafcking and other illicit activities that are settled in cash are not captured by economic models

such as the ones used in this study. Given the inherent understatement of illicit ows estimated

through economic models and methods, we use the non-normalized (or robust) estimate of illicit

ows throughout the study, although normalized or conservative estimates are also presented in the

Appendix for purposes of comparison. That said the magnitude and growth rate of illicit ows out of

Mexico are indicative of the severity of the problem faced by policymakers.

The studys main ndings include the following:

Over the period 1970-2010, cumulative illicit nancial ows from Mexico amount to a massive

US$872 billion;

The outow of illicit capital has grown signicantly from around US$1 billion in 1970 to US$68.5

billion in 2010 after reaching a peak in 2007 when the value was close to US$91 billion;

Average outows of illicit capital per annum increased sharply throughout the four decades. They

were US$3.0 billion in the 1970s, US$10.4 billion in the 1980s, US$17.4 billion in the 1990s, and

US$49.6 billion in the decade ending 2009;

Flows of illicit money averaged 5.2 percent of GDP over the 41-year period 1970-2010. The peak

year for illicit ows as a percentage of GDP was 1995 when it reached 12.7 percent;

As a percentage of GDP, illicit ows increased from an average of 4.5 percent of GDP in the

period before NAFTA was implemented in January 1994 to an average of 6.3 percent of GDP in

the 17 years that followed;

IFFs as a percent of Mexicos external debt increased from 15.0 percent in 1970 to 28.7 percentin 2010, averaging 16.8 percent over the period 1970-2010. Most of the sharp increase in this ratio

came after NAFTA was implemented in 1994;

7/31/2019 Executive Summary of 'Mexico: Illicit Financial Flows,Macroeconomic Imbalances,and the Underground Economy'

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Baring a few signicant jumps, IFFs as a percent of Mexicos exports declined from 74.4 percent

in 1970 to 23.0 percent in 2010 mostly as a result of increasing oil exports over time;

There is a stable relationship between the volume of illicit outows and the onset and aftermath

of Mexicos macroeconomic crises during the 41-year period. With reference to the six crises

studied, illicit outows increased in the crisis year compared to the two years preceding the

crisis. Specically, in the:

1973 oil price shock, illicit outows were 4.4 percent of GDP, which was almost four times

higher than the average of 1.15 percent per annum during the two years before the crisis;

1976 balance of payments crisis, illicit ows were 5.6 percent of GDP, which was well above

the average of 3.2 percent per annum recorded during 1974-1975;

1982 debt crisis, outows were 5.3 percent compared to an average of 3.5 percent during

1980-81;

1986 oil price shock, illicit ows were 8.1 percent of GDP, which was signicantly higher than

the average of 5.1 percent of GDP seen over 1984-85;

1994 peso crisis outows were 3.8 percent of GDP which was almost three times the average

rate of 1.3 percent over the period 1992-93; and,

global economic crisis of 2007, illicit ows were 8.8 percent of GDP compared to an average

annual rate of 5.5 percent over 2005-06.

Except for the rst oil shock in 1973 and the onset of the global economic crisis in late 2007,

outows of illicit capital from Mexico continued to increase one year past the crisis. The 1994

peso crisis stands out among all crises that hit Mexico during 1970-2010 in that illicit outows as a

percent of GDP increased the most in the year following the crisis. By this measure, the peso crisis

was probably the most serious crisis to have hit Mexico during this period. We nd that in general,

a macroeconomic crisis causes illicit nancial ows to increase in relation to GDP one year past the

crisis before they start to come down.

The cross-border holdings of bank deposits reported to the Bank for International Settlements

(BIS) show that the United States, offshore nancial centers or tax havens in the Caribbean, and

tax havens in Europe, are the three top destinations for Mexican private sector deposits. These

deposits consist of both licit and illicit funds. However, due to a lack of data on withdrawals and

incomplete reporting by nancial institutions it is not possible to determine the destinations of illicit

nancial ows only.

It should be noted that the methodology used in studies at Global Financial Integrity (GFI) to

estimate illicit ows differs from that of some other researchers in that the models are calibrated

to capture gross outows only. The main reason why illicit inows are not netted out from illicit

outows is that illicit inows are also unrecorded so that the government is unable to tax the funds

7/31/2019 Executive Summary of 'Mexico: Illicit Financial Flows,Macroeconomic Imbalances,and the Underground Economy'

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or use them for economic development. Indeed, net illicit ows are a no more tenable concept than

net crime. However, despite this dif ference in methodology, GFIs estimates of illicit nancial ows

from Mexico are not out of line with past studies on capital ight from Mexico, once we recognize

that those studies did not include outows due to trade mispricing, which are included in this study.

Using graphical analysis, we illustrate how illicit nancial ows, generated through an underground

economic activity, impact domestic asset markets under pegged exchange rates (the peso

was essentially pegged to the U.S. dollar before the peso crisis hit in 1994). Extending this

illustrative short-run interaction, we develop a simulation model of illicit ows from Mexico which

highlights interactions between macroeconomic policies (consisting of money supply, government

expenditures, government revenues, direct taxes, and the price level determined within the model),

structural factors (represented by trade openness and income inequality, which are exogenous),

and overall governance (represented by underground economy, a proxy, which is endogenous).

The simulation nds that, of these factors, the price level can be traced quite reliably based onthe interactions between monetary and scal policy. The resulting high rates of ination (which

were also highly variable) were found to be a signicant driver of illicit ows along with a thriving

underground economy and trade openness (which provided traders more opportunities to misprice

trade). Model simulations on Mexico seem to indicate that while illicit ows may not respond

to macroeconomic instability at lower levels (as we found in the case of India), once shocks

are sufciently large and pervasive, they could lead to a loss of investor condence and widely

anticipated exchange rate depreciation. As a result, domestic assets, both licit and illicit, become

less attractive relative to foreign assets. The higher ination led to rising nominal income which

buoyed total taxes collected, but the expanded collection did nothing to shrink the underground

economy (although the taxes collected had the expected negative coefcient in the equation

explaining the underground economy). There is clear evidence that the underground economy in

Mexico is mainly driven by illicit outows and the size of the underground economy in the previous

period (the momentum effect). Model simulations conrmed a dynamic interaction between illicit

ows and the underground economy in that each drove the other.

The results of model simulations also provide an insight into policy measures required to curtail

the generation and transmission of illicit capital. As signicant macroeconomic instability can lead

to loss of condence in the economy and trigger illegal capital ight, the government needs to

adopt prudent macroeconomic policies to curtail illicit ows. However, structural and governance-related issues also need to be addressed to stem the outows. For instance, large outows

through trade mispricing would call for comprehensive reform of the customs administration;

specically, we propose the implementation of a risk-based price proling system to curtail the risk

of export and import mispricing used to transfer illicit capital out of the country. Furthermore, we

recommend that all customs invoices be accompanied by a legal undertaking of pricing accuracy

by exporters and importers and that multinational corporations be subject to country-by-country

reporting requirements on their sales, operating costs, and prots in each jurisdiction where they

operate. Apart from trade mispricing, we identify four other areas where policy improvements

7/31/2019 Executive Summary of 'Mexico: Illicit Financial Flows,Macroeconomic Imbalances,and the Underground Economy'

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can be benecial(i) implementing automatic exchange of information and double tax avoidance

agreements with countries with which Mexico has strong trade and capital market links, (ii) shrinking

the underground economy through measures such as greater transparency and accountability

involving the awarding of government contracts, (iii) collecting information on benecial ownership

of companies and nancial accounts, and (iv) adopting a strong leadership position by Mexico

in international forums to require tax havens and banks to operate in a more transparent and

accountable manner in order to curtail the absorption of illicit funds.