MVP Imports was a cog in an alleged plot by the NTR employees and others to turn dirty money into gold, authorities said. Drug gangs, smugglers and narco-traffickers use ill-gotten money to get control of mines in the Peruvian Amazon, where armies of workers extract gold in dangerous conditions, devastating pristine swaths of rain forest, the complaint explains.

In all, NTR paid more than $3.6 billion for gold from 2012 to 2015, much of it illegally mined and some of it using MVP Imports as an intermediary, according to the complaints in Miami federal court. NTR used wire transfers to send billions of dollars back to Latin America, the complaint said.