Mexico’s financial crackdown on cartels is taking shape

Don’t shoot the middleman—arrest him.

The operation took months and last week the trap was sprung on 13 casinos. They had all been identified as sites for a massive money laundering network spanning the globe. Each betting house a node in the financing of organised crime.

The operation was a joint Mexican-US intelligence crackdown and was the first big indicator of a new way of fighting organised crime.

The so-called War against Drugs has claimed at least 400,000 lives since it was launched in 2006. It feels like, ever since, every violent means has been tried to stop the cartels. But the different ways of hitting cartels have only managed to worsen the violence, fragmenting criminal organisations and making the additional turf wars all the worse.

What makes this latest operation so significant is that it looks to hit criminals, not by going directly after them, but rather their financial resources.