Mexico arrests seven officials over escape of drug kingpin

Reuters: The Mexican Attorney General's office said on Friday it had arrested seven officials over suspected involvement in the jail break of drug kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman.

Guzman's escape last Saturday from a maximum security prison through a mile-long tunnel built into his cell was a profound embarrassment for President Enrique Peña Nieto, raising pressure on the government to do more to battle public sector corruption. Read more. 

Final round: Cartel twins vs. cop-backed kidnapper

The Sun Times: To Pedro Flores, the two men who pulled him over had looked like cops.

But moments later, face down in the back of a windowless van, his hands and feet zip-tied, Flores realized he’d been duped.

At 22, he had been quietly working with his twin brother, Margarito, to create the most successful drug-dealing partnership in Chicago’s history. Read more. 

Mexican Political Family Has Close Ties to Ruling Party, and Homes in the U.S.

NY Times: In the fall of 2013, one of Mexico’s top housing officials posted an item on Twitter about an advertising campaign promoting mortgages for low-income Mexicans. The campaign’s message was simple: “The most important thing in life is in your house.”

It carried the tag line, “Homes with value.” Read more. 

Mexico Among The World's Most Corrupt Nations In 2014, New Report Says

Forbes: With allegations of corruption in government, politics, business and banking emerging throughout the year, corruption was one of the most pervasive issues in Mexico in 2014. It came as no surprise, therefore, that the country scored worse than previously in the year-end corruption perceptions report by Transparency International released December 3rd.

With a score of 35 on a scale of 0 (highly corrupt) to 100 (very clean), Mexico ranked 103 among 175 countries in the group’s Corruption Perceptions Index, which ranks countries and territories based on how corrupt their public sector is perceived to be. The best-ranked country is Denmark and the worst is Somalia. Among the 31 countries of the Americas addressed in the survey, ten ranked lower than Mexico: Argentina, Ecuador, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Haiti and Venezuela. Canada ranked highest and Venezuela lowest. Mexico is also ranked the most corrupt among the OECD countries.  Read more. 

Mexico does poorly on corruption index

Mexico News Daily:  Denmark, New Zealand and Finland are the least corrupt countries in the world, according to perceptions gathered in Transparency International’s (TI) annual Corruption Perceptions Index.

The index is based on how corrupt a country’s public sector is perceived to be, on a scale of 0 to 100, 0 being highly corrupt and 100 being very clean. Read more. 

The 10 Most Corrupt Mexicans Of 2013

Forbes
By Dolia Estevez

Alarming levels of corruption in government, the judiciary and law-enforcement, earned Mexico the 2013 title of one of the two most corrupt countries in Latin America, according to the Global Corruption Barometer released in July by Transparency International, an anti-corruption nonprofit group. Mexico shares its rank with Argentina.

In the group’s Global Corruption Barometer of 2013, Mexico’s political parties, police, legislature and judiciary were perceived as the most corrupt, with 91%, 90%, 83% and 80% negative views on corruption.  The report, which is based on a survey of  114,000 people in 107 countries, offers a warning that the abuse of power, secret dealings and bribery continue to ravage societies around the world. In  Mexico corruption cases are rarely prosecuted.

A serious drag on Mexico’s development and a significant obstacle to Mexico achieving a functional democracy, corruption has long been a part of the country’s political culture. Carlos Hank González, the deceased founder of the powerful Grupo Atlacomulco, which masterminded Enrique Peña Nieto’s run for president, once said: “A politician that is poor is a poor politician.” For many Mexican politicians, his motto became the Bible.

The following is a list of the 10 Mexicans perceived to be among the  most corrupt in 2013. I appreciate the input received from colleagues and academics during the process of compiling this list.  Read more. 

Mexico Faces Challenges in Tackling Corruption

ABC News 
By E. Eduardo Castillo
Associated Press
June 26, 2013

It's a scandal a day in Mexico: an ex-governor sent to jail, another under investigation, mysterious money popping up in senators' bank accounts, politicians passing stacks of bills on YouTube.

Scandals are nothing new to Mexican politics, but the pace of revelations is accelerating as a more robust democracy and social media have emboldened Mexico's watchdogs, who are increasingly trying to bring the officials to justice or at least publicly shame them. And much of the new attention focuses on scandals in states, where the powerful grip of governors often had masked wrongdoing in the past.  Read more. 

Former Mexican official's boasts add fire to corruption probes

Los Angeles Times
By Richard Fausset and Cecilia Sanchez
June 12, 2013

It was the kind of big-man boast that would have made Jay-Z or Bo Diddley proud: He owned 300 suits, he said. Four hundred pairs of pants, 1,000 shirts and 400 pairs of shoes. He shopped Beverly Hills, Rodeo Drive, "the best of Los Angeles."

Unfortunately for Andres Granier, the ex-governor of the state of Tabasco, his fellow Mexicans are in no mood to hear such stuff from the political class.  Read more. 

A traditionalist shines through Mexico's fresh new face

Los Angeles Times

By Richard Fausset

March 10, 2013

MEXICO CITY — They elected a youthful president, a self-styled defender of democratic principles who promised to bring the country up to 21st century standards.

But many Mexicans suspected that an old-fashioned dinosaur heart was beating beneath Enrique Peña Nieto's smartly tailored suits, an inheritance from his Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, whose top-down, quasi-authoritarian rule defined much of Mexico's 20th century history.

On Sunday, after 100 days of living under Peña Nieto's rule, the Mexican people have a better idea of the ways in which their 46-year-old president, and his vintage political party, plan to manage the future of the United States' southern neighbor, a country rife with promise and peril. They are also discovering that Peña Nieto may be a kind of hybrid political creature, intent on effecting change while hewing to some of his party's older ways.  Read more. 

Report shows most Mexican prisons controlled by inmates

Reuters: By Lizbeth Diaz. MEXICO CITY - Six out of 10 Mexican prisons are "self-governed" by prison gangs or drug cartels, according to a report issued Monday by the country's human rights commission.

Commission representative Andres Aguirre said at a news conference that Mexico's prisons also are plagued by overcrowding, a shortage of guards and corrupt employees who sometimes help with breakouts.

Aguirre said 60 percent of the country's 430 prisons or jails are controlled by criminal elements.

He added that the escape of 521 inmates over 14 incidents since 2010 - often with the help of corrupt prison officials - constitutes a grave problem for the country.

Earlier this month, more than 130 inmates escaped from a prison near the U.S. border in Piedras Negras, Coahuila, one of numerous mass breakouts tied to organized crime in the past few years. Read more.

Mexican judge orders arrest of ex-governor on drug charges

(Reuters) Aug 29.  - A Mexican federal judge has ordered the arrest of former state Governor Tomas Yarrington on suspicion of aiding drug traffickers, federal prosecutors said on Wednesday.
 
Yarrington, a former Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) governor of Tamaulipas, has been a thorn in the side of the PRI since allegations surfaced this year he had worked with drug cartels.

The centrist PRI, which ruled Mexico between 1929 and 2000, is due to return to power in December after the party's candidate, Enrique Pena Nieto, won a July 1 presidential election.

The PRI's long rule was tainted by allegations of corruption and making deals with drug gangs, which have ravaged Mexico over the past six years despite the efforts of conservative President Felipe Calderon to bring them to heel.

Yarrington, who governed the northern border state of Tamaulipas between 1999 and 2005, is suspected of accepting cash from drug cartels and using it to buy real estate in Texas. Read More.

Judge sees organized crime in case of high-ranking military officers

El Universal: Americas Program Original Translation by Sarah Brady

A formal arrest warrant was issued against retired General Tomas Angeles Dauahare, as well as the Generals Roberto Dahue, Ricardo Escorcia, Ruben Perez Ramirez, and Lieutenant Silvio Isidro de Jesus Hernandez.

Silvia Otero. Mexico City. A federal judge ordered a formal arrest warrant for the participation of high-ranking military officers in organized crime, who were being informally held for their alleged links with Beltran Leyva's cartel.

The indictment, made by a federal judge in Toluca, is against the retired General Tomas Angeles Dauahare, as well as against Generals Roberto Dawe, Ricardo Escorcia, Ruben Perez Ramirez and Lieutenant Colonel Silvio Isidro de Jesus Hernandez.

The Attorney General's Office (PGR) reported that the army officers are suspected of participating in organized crime in perpetrating drug trafficking.

In the statement of consignment also includes charges against Edgar Valdez Villareal, a.k.a. "the Barbie," and a group of alleged drug dealers and operators for Beltran Leyva's cartel.

The Third District Judge of federal criminal prosecutions, based in Toluca, issued an arrest warrant against the military officers who were being held since this past May with the expectation that they be transferred at any moment to the maximum security prison Altiplano in Almoloya de Juarez.  See Spanish Original.

Honduras counts the human rights cost of America's war on drugs

The Guardian: American agents accused of illegal acts in new front line against the narco-traffickers
The deep bullet wound in Hilda Lezama's thigh is a livid pointer to Honduras's unwanted status as the latest front line in America's war on drugs.

For all of her 53 years Lezama has lived in Ahuas, a village of wooden homes built on stilts, close to the fast-flowing Patuca river in the remote Mosquitia region of eastern Honduras. For 25 years, her family have run a business ferrying locals up and down the waterways that link the isolated jungle settlements.

On such a trip two months ago, she was shot from an American helicopter in a counter-narcotics raid involving US drug enforcement agents and Honduran troops. Four other local people, including two women, were killed. Read more.

Old Politics Are New Again In Mexico

In analyzing the forces that drove the PRI back into power after its first-ever defeat in 2000, many are pointing to the widespread corruption and inefficiency that made the ruling PAN party virtually indistinguishable from its rival.

NPR: What happened to Mexico's National Action Party? It was the party that finally broke seven decades of PRI rule in the country and promised to bring long sought-after reforms to the country. Why did voters throw them out of office after two terms? Was the vote a referendum on Felipe Calderon's war on drugs?

ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST: From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Robert Siegel.

MELISSA BLOCK, HOST: And I'm Melissa Block.

In Mexico, last weekend's victory of the P-R-I or PRI was also a stunning defeat for the party that had been in power since 2000. The National Action Party, known as PAN, was thrashed at the polls. Mexican voters were unhappy about the economy and the spreading violence of the drug war. It's a big setback for the party credited with ousting the PRI 12 years ago and ushering in a new era of democracy for Mexico. Read more.

Posted by Ryan Gentzler.

Corruption flows freely along U.S.-Mexico border

KIAH TV Houston: From a small hill at a state park here, the border town of Palomas, Mexico, can be made out through the desert haze. It lies four miles to the south, but the corruption that roils Palomas and the rest of Northern Mexico may as well be a block away.

Last year, black sedans and hatchbacks loaded with federal agents poured into Columbus, a town of 2,000 people, arresting the mayor, the police chief, a city trustee and nine others. They have all pleaded guilty in a gun-smuggling operation that sold about 100 firearms, mostly assault rifles, to Mexican drug cartels."Unfortunately, the border is just one vast conspiracy," said Howard Anderson, the lawyer for former Mayor Eddie Espinoza. read more

Pemex Exploration loses 400 billion pesos in accounting loss

La Jornada Americas Program Original Translation

The Monitoring Committee of the House of Representatives said yesterday that it would request the Secretariat of Public Function (SFP) to investigate the accounting disparity of nearly $400 billion pesos in Pemex Exploration and Production (PEP), which corresponds to losses in financial instruments abroad in 2009, an amount that was transferred as accounts receivable by Pemex Corporation in 2010.

The legislative commission noted that, later on, Pemex Corporation recorded the loss, which was noted in the 2010 public account, as an increase in investment in their subsidiaries, but without a specific contribution, technical merit, or authorization of the state-owned company’s board.

In detailing the adjustments that Petróleos Mexicanos performed to obscure the losses, the chairman of the committee, Damian Esthela Peralta (PRD) announced that the Permanent Committee requests Juan José Suárez Coppel come before them to explain what “accounting measures” were taken to allow the state-owned company to hide the movement of money.

Because, explained a document referring to the audit of accounts receivable and the past due loans of Pemex Exploration and Production, the financial statements of the subsidiary of Pemex show the loss of nearly 400 billion pesos.

“What does this mean? In any case, that the results of previous years, or in this case in particular, these should be considered as losses by Pemex Corporation and not an investment in subsidiaries,” explained the legislator.

The review of the accounts by the Supreme Audit Office of the Federation (ASF) said that the financial statements made by Pemex Corporation and Pemex Exploration do not disclose the nature of the loss generated by the subsidiary.

The ambiguity of the records in this area, the ASF concluded, prevented their auditors from determining the amount related to the financial instruments issued by Petróleos Mexicanos, or the debt instruments acquired by the oil company. “Therefore, the exact nature and type of the losses is unknown among the 389,564,700,000 pesos,” stressed the Supreme Audit Office of the Federation in its findings, presented yesterday by the PRD legislator.

Esthela Damián said the accounting movement was carried out from the office DCF-SUCOFI-GC-562011, on February 3, 2011, through which corporate finance management accounting instructed each of the subsidiary bodies to transfer the results determined in 2009 and register them as accounts receivable.

Given this, she said, the ASF ordered the undertaking of administrative responsibility and sanctioning for the acts or omissions of the public officials who conducted the transfer.

He also stated that Juan José Suárez Coppel should explain to the House the exact nature of the financial transactions that generated losses of 389.5 billion pesos and verify their connection to related financial instruments by Deferred Investment Projects in Spending (Pidregas) issued abroad. See Spanish original

Translation by Michael Kane, Americas Program

Mexican General's Murder Raises New Questions over Narco Ties

InSight Crime: "Retired Mexican General Mario Acosta Chaparro, accused of ties to the Juarez Cartel, was murdered in Mexico City, raising suspicions over his relationship with the criminal underworld.

Acosta (pictured) was shot three times at a garage in Mexico City on April 20. According to eyewitnesses, the ex-general was murdered by a lone gunman who then fled the scene on a motorcycle, reports the LA TImes.

Acosta was arrested in 2000, and sentenced to 16 years in prison two years later for aiding and protecting former Juarez Cartel leader Amado Carillo Fuentes. However, the conviction was overturned in 2007, when a panel of judges ruled that the prosecutors had failed to successfully prove the links between Acosta and Carillo. After Acosta's release, his rank of general was reinstated shortly before his retirement the following year." read more

Mexican army detains Gulf coast mayor with drug suspects

The Washington Post: Mexico’s army says troops have detained a small-town mayor in the company of heavily armed drug cartel gunmen, leaving the ruling party officials scrambling to distance themselves from a man who had run for office on their ticket.

The Defense Department said late Wednesday that soldiers detained Chinameca Mayor Martin Padua on Tuesday along with five alleged members of the Zetas drug cartel carrying rifles and hand grenades. read more

Before ‘Aiding’ Mexico, U.S. Must Deal with its Own Corruption

El Universal: "“Mexico has made the U.S. aware of its mistakes in regard to high drug consumption and the indiscriminate sale of assault weapons on its territory. … But what has not been achieved is participation from our northern neighbors commensurate with the responsibility that they have now accepted.

Organized crime is transnational, and will only be eliminated if attacked with equal force in all countries in which it resides.”" read more

Central American Drug War: Government Negotiates Reduction in Homicides with Gangs

More details on the alleged deal between El Salvador's government and the Mara Salvatrucha gang. 

ElFaro.net: "Last week, between Thursday and Saturday, around 30 gang members, leaders of the Mara Salvatrucha and Barrio 18, were moved from El Salvador's maximum-security prison to less secure jails. Among them were"Viejo Lin", "Chino Tres Colas", "El Diablito" and "El Trece." The transfers were part of a pact between the gangs and the Salvadoran government." read more