U.S. agents spent years investigating a series of allegations that allies of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador met with drug cartels and received millions of dollars after he took office, according to U.S. government records and three people familiar with the subject.
The investigation, which had not been previously reported, revealed information that pointed to possible links between powerful cartel operators and Mexican advisors and officials close to the president while he governed the country.
However, the United States never initiated a formal investigation against López Obrador and the agents involved closed the case. They concluded that the United States government had little interest in bringing charges against the leader of one of its main allies, said three people close to the matter, who were not authorized to speak publicly.
López Obrador called the accusations “completely false” in response to questions from The New York Times on Thursday, February 22. He said that news of the investigation would not affect “in any way” the relationship between Mexico and the United States, but he expected a response from the North American government.
“Does this diminish the confidence that the Mexican government has in the United States?” López Obrador said at a routine conference, adding: “Time will tell.”
Drug cartels have long infiltrated the Mexican state, from the lowest to the highest levels of government. They pay the police, manipulate the mayors, co-opt high officials and dominate large areas of the country.
While recent efforts by U.S. agents identified possible links between the cartels and López Obrador’s collaborators, they found no direct connection between the president himself and the criminal organizations. In this regard, US officials refused to provide statements.
Much of the information collected by US officials came from informants whose accounts can be difficult to corroborate and sometimes end up being wrong. Agents obtained the information while investigating cartel activities, and it was unclear what percentage of what informants detailed was independently confirmed.
The alleged meetings between AMLO collaborators and drug leaders
For example, records show that an informant told investigators that one of López Obrador’s closest confidants met with Ismael ‘El Mayo’ Zambada García, a top leader of the Sinaloa Cartel, before his election victory. 2018 presidential elections.
A different source told them that after the president’s election, a founder of the notoriously violent Zetas Cartel paid four million dollars to two of López Obrador’s allies in hopes of getting out of prison.
Investigators obtained information from a third source that suggested the drug cartels were in possession of videos of the president’s children receiving drug money, records show. López Obrador denied all accusations made by the informants.
U.S. law enforcement officials also independently tracked payments from people they believed were cartel operators to López Obrador’s middlemen, two of the people familiar with the investigation said.
At least one of those payments, they commented, was made approximately on the same dates that López Obrador traveled to the state of Sinaloa in 2020 and met the mother of drug trafficker Joaquín Guzmán Loera, better known as ‘El Chapo’, who is now serving life sentence in a US federal prison.
More than a decade ago, an alternate investigation by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) uncovered allegations that traffickers had donated millions to López Obrador’s failed presidential campaign in 2006. This investigation, detailed by three media outlets last month, It was closed without any charge being issued.
The obstacles that the US found for the investigation
For the US, bringing criminal charges against high-level foreign officials is an unusual and complicated task. Building a legal case against López Obrador would be particularly challenging. The last time the United States brought criminal charges against a top Mexican official, it ended up dropping them after his arrest sparked a diplomatic rift with Mexico.
Joe Biden’s administration has enormous interest in managing its relationship with López Obrador, whom it considers essential to contain the increase in migration that has become one of the most controversial issues in US politics. It’s a big concern for voters in the run-up to this fall’s presidential election.
In addition, Mexico is one of the main trading partners of the United States and is the most important collaborator of this country in efforts to stop the crossing of illicit drugs such as fentanyl across the southern border.
US law enforcement agencies have jurisdiction to investigate and charge officials from other countries if they can demonstrate a connection to narcotics crossing the border into the US.
While it is rare for U.S. agents to pursue top foreign officials, it is not unprecedented: The drug trafficking trial of Juan Orlando Hernández, the former president of Honduras, began this week in Federal District Court in Manhattan.
Federal prosecutors in New York also secured a corruption conviction last year against Genaro García Luna, Mexico’s former public security secretary, convincing jurors that he had accepted millions of dollars in bribes from violent cartels he was supposed to pursue.
While efforts to scrutinize López Obrador’s allies are no longer active, the revelation that officials in the US were quietly examining corruption allegations against him could be damaging in itself.
Media reports last month, including one from ProPublica, about a U.S. investigation into donations to his 2006 campaign (for an election he did not win) caused a storm in Mexico.
López Obrador publicly denounced the stories, implying that they were aimed at influencing the country’s presidential election in June, in which his protégé, former Mexico City mayor Claudia Sheinbaum, is leading the race to replace him. He suggested the reports could complicate talks on migration and fentanyl with the U.S. government and said he was considering not hosting President Biden’s national security adviser for a planned meeting in the Mexican capital.
“How are we going to be sitting at the table talking about the fight against drugs if they, or one of their institutions, are leaking information and harming me?” López Obrador said at a regular press conference days after the stories were published.
After President Biden called López Obrador to calm tensions, the Mexican Foreign Minister said the US National Security Advisor assured Mexico “that this is a closed issue for them.”
The Biden administration has handled López Obrador very carefully, avoiding public criticism and repeatedly sending top officials to Mexico City to meet with him and privately press for sustained immigration measures.
The decision to put the recent investigation dormant, people familiar with it said, was largely due to the failure of a separate and highly controversial corruption case. In the final months of the Trump administration in 2020, US officials brought charges against General Salvador Cienfuegos Zepeda, who served as Mexico’s defense secretary from 2012 to 2018.
In a federal indictment, unsealed in New York after a multi-year investigation dubbed “Operation Godfather,” prosecutors accused General Cienfuegos of using the powers of his office to help a violent criminal group called the H-2 Cartel carry out carry out their drug trafficking operations.
His arrest at the Los Angeles airport sparked fury within the Mexican government, particularly among leaders of the country’s armed forces, who have assumed greater responsibilities and power under López Obrador.
The president said the charges were “fabricated” and his administration released more than 700 pages of communications intercepted by U.S. agents that purported to show criminal activity but were inconclusive.
The DEA, which already had a checkered history as the protagonist of a war on drugs considered bloody and useless, suffered a tremendous blow in its relationship with the Mexican government.
Just weeks after the arrest occurred, the United States Department of Justice, under strong pressure from López Obrador, reversed course and dismissed the accusation, sending General Cienfuegos back to Mexico.
The episode not only damaged long-standing security agreements between the two countries, but also left a deep impression on law enforcement officials north of the border, many of whom saw the botched case as a warning about pursuing efforts similar attacks against other high-ranking Mexican officials.
TAKEN FROM INFOBAE
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