China’s Money Launderers Are Bankrolling America’s Fentanyl Epidemic

Money laundering isn’t new — and neither is China’s role in it. Millennia ago, Chinese merchants developed schemes to “clean” the profits of commercial trade and avoid taxation. Today, their successors are doing much the same. Only now, they’re laundering billions through the U.S. financial system and fueling one of the deadliest fentanyl-fueled drug crises in American history. In a step in the right direction, the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (known as FinCEN) issued a sweeping advisory on Aug. 28 warning that Chinese money laundering networks now represent “one of the most significant money laundering threat actors facing...