MEXICO CITY — The Mexican economy is “hemorrhaging” billions of dollars annually because of money laundering, tax evasion and other forms of corruption, a new study has found.

Mexico lost $872 billion between 1970 and 2010, the Washington-based advocacy organization Global Financial Integrity said in an 80-page report released Monday. That averages a whopping 5.2 percent of gross domestic product, the group said.

“This is an enormously damaging reality for emerging markets and developing countries … an enormously damaging drainage of resources,” the group’s director, Raymond W. Baker, said at a news conference.

It is money that could have been used to invest in education, to build roads or to fight the drug cartels, he noted, in a country with one of the largest gaps between rich and poor. “The negative ramifications are huge for everyday Mexicans,” he said.

One of the most common ways for money to flow illegally out of Mexico is trade manipulation or incorrect pricing, Baker said, when companies or individuals falsify invoices and undervalue or overvalue exports or imports. The Los Angeles Times recently reported that “trade-based” money laundering was fast becoming a favored method of powerful drug cartels.

In its report, Global Financial Integrity said illicit cash outflows from Mexico soared after the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, went into effect.