DEA Didn’t Pursue New Studies of Mexican Drug Corruption After Closing AMLO Case — ProPublica

When the Justice Division shut down a secret inquiry into allegations that drug traffickers had funded the primary presidential marketing campaign of Mexico’s chief, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, officers in Washington closed the case forcefully.

Through the years that adopted that 2011 choice, U.S. regulation enforcement companies continued to listen to comparable reviews, together with accounts from not less than 4 high-level Mexican traffickers who stated their gangs helped to fund López Obrador’s political machine in return for guarantees of presidency safety, paperwork and interviews present.

However U.S. investigators didn’t pursue these claims, partly as a result of they noticed little assist in Washington for a corruption case towards an essential Mexican political chief, present and former officers stated.

“We took our greatest shot, they usually didn’t need to do the case,” one former investigator for the Drug Enforcement Administration stated of the 18-month inquiry into López Obrador’s 2006 marketing campaign. “That was it; no one had any urge for food to push it ahead.”

López Obrador misplaced that first presidential race and a second in 2012 earlier than successful election in 2018. A pointy critic of his predecessors’ U.S.-backed “struggle” on the traffickers, he promised to make use of social packages — “hugs, not bullets” — to dissuade younger Mexicans from becoming a member of the mafias. However his presidency has seen organized crime flourish as by no means earlier than.

The president has denied that his 2006 marketing campaign took cash from the traffickers. He blamed current reviews in regards to the DEA inquiry by ProPublica and different information organizations on a conspiracy to weaken his political celebration forward of nationwide elections final month. But issues about potential mafia ties to not less than one member of his 2006 marketing campaign employees have additionally emerged inside his personal authorities.

The candidate of López Obrador’s celebration, Claudia Sheinbaum, gained the presidential race by a landslide. Though violence was a central difficulty within the vote, she has signaled that she’s going to comply with comparable insurance policies in coping with organized crime.

As ProPublica reported this yr, the DEA investigation started in April 2010, after a trafficker-turned-informant gave brokers an in depth account of the negotiation and supply of some $2 million to López Obrador’s 2006 marketing campaign. It ended when the Justice Division rejected a DEA-proposed sting operation inside Mexico aimed on the future president’s political workforce.

After Justice officers closed down the inquiry, a number of high-profile drug traffickers who have been captured in Mexico and extradited to the US supplied investigators additional details about the mafias’ dealings with López Obrador’s political operation. However, in accordance with beforehand undisclosed authorities paperwork and interviews with greater than a dozen present and former U.S. officers, almost all of that info was filed away or ignored.

Though particulars of the case have been intently held, a bigger circle of U.S. regulation enforcement brokers was conscious that an investigation into López Obrador’s marketing campaign had been aborted partly due to the perceived dangers to the U.S.-Mexico relationship. In different instances, investigators stated, they have been merely extra centered on what info they may extract from the traffickers about their mafia associates and the motion of their medication. Due to the sensitivity of the case, the officers would solely talk about it solely on the situation of anonymity.

The American-born trafficker who was stated to have donated the $2 million to López Obrador’s marketing campaign, Edgar Valdez Villareal, often known as “La Barbie,” was captured by the Mexican authorities in 2010, simply because the DEA probe was gaining momentum. However by the point he and two of his lieutenants have been extradited, the case was over.

A type of lieutenants, Sergio Villarreal Barragán, a tall former police officer often known as “El Grande,” gave probably the most substantial info to American investigators. In a current guide, a Mexican journalist, Anabel Hernández, quotes unnamed sources as saying the trafficker instructed senior Mexican prosecutors and two DEA brokers within the first days after his arrest on Sept. 12, 2010, that he had personally delivered $500,000 to López Obrador in June 2006, close to the top of his election marketing campaign.

However a beforehand unpublished DEA report reviewed by ProPublica makes no point out of that assertion. The 2 brokers’ “Report of Investigation,” dated Sept. 20, quotes the trafficker as saying he “was all for cooperating with the U.S. Authorities and would be capable to present beneficial info on high-ranking Mexican authorities officers.” Nonetheless, officers accustomed to the episode stated El Grande emphasised that he would solely speak as soon as he was safely extradited to the US.

A number of former officers stated that it was not unusual for American regulation enforcement brokers in Mexico to edit out allegations of high-level corruption from reviews they knew could be shared with different U.S. companies. Officers accustomed to the López Obrador marketing campaign inquiry stated they by no means heard that El Grande claimed to have personally delivered money to the candidate.

El Grande did begin speaking extra brazenly about Mexican corruption on the extradition flight that took him to Texas in Could of 2012, officers stated. He described enormous bribes to senior officers, together with Genaro García Luna, a robust former safety minister who was later convicted on U.S. drug conspiracy costs. He additionally confirmed he attended the 2006 assembly at which La Barbie agreed to fund López Obrador’s marketing campaign. However the officers added that he was not questioned intimately about these donations as a result of the DEA’s investigation had already been shut down.

Three years later, El Grande’s onetime boss, La Barbie, was extradited to Atlanta, the place he, too, confirmed some features of the 2006 donations, officers stated. However the DEA’s inquiry was far sufficient previously that investigators didn’t query him in depth about López Obrador, they added. (Prosecutors additionally considered his reminiscence as sufficiently unreliable that they selected to not use him as a witness within the corruption trial of García Luna final yr.)

One other Sinaloa trafficker, Jesús Reynaldo Zambada García, has testified in two high-profile New York trials that his faction of the syndicate additionally donated thousands and thousands of {dollars} to López Obrador’s political equipment. However Zambada’s accounts have been obscure and fragmentary, partly as a result of federal prosecutors sought to restrict his testimony about Mexican corruption.

Till his seize by the Mexican authorities in 2008, Zambada oversaw the syndicate’s operations in Mexico Metropolis, together with the flowery layers of bribes it paid to safeguard cocaine flights that landed in and close to the capital.

Throughout the 2018 trial of Sinaloa cartel chief Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, Zambada testified that the gang had paid “a number of million {dollars}” to a prime Mexico Metropolis safety official in 2005, when López Obrador was the capital’s mayor. Zambada indicated that the cash was a down fee for defense in a future nationwide authorities run by López Obrador.

In one other trial final yr, Zambada confirmed that he had instructed U.S. investigators that his group paid López Obrador’s aide, Gabriel Rejino, “one thing like” $3 million.

The declare made headlines in Mexico, the place each López Obrador and Regino denied it. However the story received muddy after a lawyer requested Zambada if he had as soon as instructed investigators the cartel paid Regino $7 million for López Obrador’s marketing campaign towards Vicente Fox. (Fox was the earlier president from the conservative celebration of former President Felipe Calderón; in 2006, López Obrador ran towards Calderón to succeed Fox.) Zambada, who appeared puzzled by the query, denied saying any such factor.

However a beforehand unpublished doc reviewed by ProPublica exhibits that Zambada did the truth is make such a declare — or that the Homeland Safety agent who summarized his debriefing on July 6, 2013, in Washington may need confused one conservative president with one other.

“López was paid $7 million USD by means of Gabriel Regino when López was operating towards President Fox,” states a abstract of the interview, which centered primarily on the layers of bribes to police, customs and navy officers that Zambada organized for drug flights into Mexico Metropolis and close by Toluca.

Present and former U.S. officers stated some extradited members of two different Mexican trafficking teams, the Gulf cartel and the Zetas, instructed investigators that their gangs additionally contributed to López Obrador’s 2006 marketing campaign.

The primary of these traffickers, former Gulf Cartel chief Osiel Cárdenas Guillén, instructed brokers quickly after being extradited to Houston in 2007 that his group had given cash to López Obrador’s marketing campaign in addition to to authorities safety officers, two individuals accustomed to his account stated. However brokers didn’t ask Cárdenas intimately about these purported bribes as a result of they thought then that there was little probability the Justice Division would attempt to prosecute a corruption case, these individuals stated. An legal professional for Cárdenas, Chip B. Lewis, declined to touch upon the report.

Though López Obrador has insisted in current months that there’s “no proof” behind the reviews of traffickers’ contributions in 2006, paperwork from his personal authorities present that Mexico’s protection minister had severe issues in regards to the alleged drug ties of a employees member from that marketing campaign.

The issues centered on a retired military colonel, Silvio Hernández Soto, who was one among López Obrador’s senior bodyguards in 2006 and have become a goal of scrutiny for each DEA investigators and Mexican prosecutors who led a sweeping anti-corruption case in the course of the Calderón authorities.

A DEA informant who had labored as a trafficker for La Barbie instructed investigators in each nations that he had been launched to Hernández in reference to the 2006 marketing campaign and later sought his assist in arranging navy safety for drug flights by means of the Cancún airport. In 2012, Hernández was arrested in Mexico together with a number of military generals who have been stated to have assisted with the safety scheme.

In 2013, nevertheless, a brand new Mexican authorities abruptly modified course, dropped the corruption investigation and freed all of the suspects within the case. Though the accusations towards Hernández have been by no means disproved, he went on to function a senior police official in western Sinaloa state, the heartland of Mexico’s drug business.

After López Obrador took energy in 2018, Hernández was named to a delicate, high-level submit within the Mexican legal professional common’s workplace. However in a unprecedented transfer that didn’t develop into public on the time, the brand new president’s protection minister, Gen. Luis Cresencio Sandoval, sought to dam the appointment, paperwork present.

In a letter to the legal professional common on Sept. 12, 2019, Sandoval warned there was “documentary proof” in each courtroom recordsdata and navy intelligence databases displaying that Hernández “maintained ties with members of organized crime.” The letter cites allegations from the Mexican anti-corruption case — which had additionally been intently investigated by navy prosecutors — and incidents from Hernández’s tenure in Sinaloa.

The letter additionally famous that the senior official who had beneficial Hernández for the delicate submit within the legal professional common’s workplace was the president’s intelligence chief, retired Gen. Audomaro Martínez — who had been Hernández’s direct boss throughout López Obrador’s 2006 marketing campaign.

The protection minister’s letter was first reported by the nongovernmental group Mexicans In opposition to Corruption and Impunity, which found it in a trove of Protection Ministry paperwork made public final yr by a hacker group, Guacamaya Leaks.

López Obrador’s chief spokesperson, Jesús Ramírez Cuevas, stated Hernández was not finally employed to the legal professional common’s workplace or some other submit in López Obrador’s authorities. He didn’t touch upon why Martínez had beneficial Hernández for the place.

A lawyer for Hernández didn’t reply to messages in search of remark.