U.S. Examined Allegations of Cartel Ties to Allies of Mexico’s President

American regulation enforcement officers spent years wanting into allegations that allies of Mexico’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, met with and took hundreds of thousands of {dollars} from drug cartels after he took workplace, in keeping with U.S. data and three folks aware of the matter.

The inquiry, which has not been beforehand reported, uncovered data pointing to potential hyperlinks between highly effective cartel operatives and Mexican advisers and officers near the president whereas he ruled the nation.

However the US by no means opened a proper investigation into Mr. López Obrador, and the officers concerned in the end shelved the inquiry. They concluded that the U.S. authorities had little urge for food to pursue allegations towards the chief of one in all America’s prime allies, stated the three folks aware of the case, who weren’t licensed to talk publicly.

Mr. López Obrador referred to as the allegations “fully false,” responding to questions from The New York Occasions on Thursday. He stated the information of the inquiry wouldn’t “in any approach” have an effect on Mexico’s relationship with the US, however stated he anticipated a response from the U.S. authorities.

“Does this diminish the belief the Mexican authorities has in the US?” Mr. López Obrador stated at an everyday information convention, including, “Time will inform.”

Drug cartels have lengthy infiltrated the Mexican state, from the bottom ranges to the higher reaches of presidency. They repay the police, manipulate mayors, co-opt senior officers and dominate broad swaths of the nation.

However whereas the latest efforts by the U.S. officers recognized doable ties between the cartels and Mr. López Obrador’s associates, they didn’t discover any direct connections between the president himself and felony organizations.

American officers declined to remark.

A lot of the data collected by U.S. officers got here from informants whose accounts might be tough to corroborate and typically find yourself being incorrect. The investigators obtained the data whereas wanting into the actions of drug cartels, and it was not clear how a lot of what the informants informed them was independently confirmed.

For instance, data present that the investigators had been informed by an informant that one in all Mr. López Obrador’s closest confidants met with Ismael Zambada García, a prime chief of the Sinaloa drug cartel, earlier than his victory within the 2018 presidential election.

A special supply informed them that after the president was elected, a founding father of the notoriously violent Zetas cartel paid $4 million to 2 of Mr. López Obrador’s allies within the hope of being launched from jail.

Investigators obtained data from a 3rd supply suggesting that drug cartels had been in possession of movies of the president’s sons selecting up drug cash, data present.

Mr. López Obrador denied all of the allegations made by the informants.

The U.S. regulation enforcement officers additionally independently tracked funds from folks they believed to be cartel operatives to intermediaries for Mr. López Obrador, two of the folks aware of the inquiry stated.

A minimum of a kind of funds, they stated, was made across the identical time that Mr. López Obrador traveled to the state of Sinaloa in 2020 and met the mom of the drug lord Joaquín Guzmán Loera, who is healthier often known as El Chapo and is now serving a life sentence in an American federal prison.

Greater than a decade in the past, a separate investigation led by the Drug Enforcement Administration unearthed allegations that traffickers had donated hundreds of thousands to Mr. López Obrador’s unsuccessful presidential marketing campaign in 2006. This inquiry, which was detailed by three media shops final month, was closed with out prices being introduced.

For the US, pursuing felony prices towards prime overseas officers is a uncommon and complex enterprise. Constructing a authorized case towards Mr. López Obrador could be notably difficult. The final time the US filed felony prices towards a prime Mexican official, it in the end dropped them after his arrest brought about a diplomatic rift with Mexico.

The Biden administration has an unlimited stake in managing its relationship with Mr. López Obrador, who’s seen as indispensable to containing a surge in migration that has grow to be one of the crucial contentious points in American politics. It’s a main concern for voters within the lead as much as the presidential election this fall.

Mexico can be a prime American buying and selling accomplice and the only most essential collaborator in U.S. efforts to sluggish illicit medicine like fentanyl from crossing the southern border.

U.S. regulation enforcement businesses have jurisdiction to analyze and convey prices towards officers of different nations if they’ll present a connection to narcotics shifting throughout the border into the US.

Whereas it’s unusual for American brokers to pursue prime overseas officers, it isn’t unprecedented: The drug trial of Juan Orlando Hernández, the previous president of Honduras, started this week in Federal District Courtroom in Manhattan.

Federal prosecutors in New York additionally secured a corruption conviction last year against Genaro García Luna, Mexico’s former public safety secretary, persuading a jury that he had taken hundreds of thousands of {dollars} in bribes from violent cartels he was meant to be pursuing.

Whereas efforts to scrutinize Mr. López Obrador’s allies are now not lively, the revelation that U.S. regulation enforcement officers had been quietly analyzing corruption allegations towards them may itself be damaging.

Final month’s media experiences, including one by ProPublica, a couple of U.S. inquiry into 2006 marketing campaign donations — for an election he didn’t win — ignited a firestorm in Mexico.

Mr. López Obrador publicly denounced the tales, implying they had been aimed toward influencing the nation’s presidential election in June, through which his protégé, the previous Mexico Metropolis mayor Claudia Sheinbaum, is main the race to interchange him. He steered the experiences may complicate talks on migration and fentanyl with the U.S. authorities, and stated he thought-about not receiving President Biden’s homeland safety adviser for a deliberate assembly within the Mexican capital.

“How are we going to be sitting on the desk speaking in regards to the combat towards medicine in the event that they, or one in all their establishments, is leaking data and harming me?” Mr. López Obrador stated at an everyday information convention days after the tales revealed.

After President Biden referred to as Mr. López Obrador, calming tensions, the Mexican overseas minister stated that the U.S. homeland safety adviser informed Mexico “that it is a closed concern for them.”

The Biden administration has dealt with Mr. López Obrador with nice care, avoiding public criticism in favor of repeatedly dispatching prime officers to Mexico Metropolis to fulfill with him and press for sustained migration enforcement in personal.

The choice to let the latest inquiry go dormant, the folks aware of it stated, was brought about largely by the breakdown of a separate, extremely contentious corruption case. Within the closing months of the Trump administration in 2020, U.S. officers introduced prices towards Gen. Salvador Cienfuegos Zepeda, who served as Mexico’s protection secretary from 2012 to 2018.

In a federal indictment, unsealed in New York after a multiyear investigation named “Operation Padrino,” prosecutors accused Normal Cienfuegos of utilizing the powers of his workplace to assist a violent felony group referred to as the H-2 cartel conduct its drug trafficking operations.

His arrest on the Los Angeles airport provoked a furor throughout the Mexican authorities, notably among the many leaders of the nation’s armed forces, which have assumed higher duties and energy underneath Mr. López Obrador.

The president stated the costs had been “fabricated” and his administration launched greater than 700 pages of communications intercepted by U.S. brokers that purported to indicate felony exercise however had been forged as inconclusive.

The Drug Enforcement Administration, which already had a checkered historical past as protagonists in a drug warfare seen as bloody and futile, suffered an incredible blow to its relationship with the Mexican authorities.

Simply weeks after the arrest befell, the U.S. Justice Division, underneath heavy stress from Mr. López Obrador, reversed itself and dismissed the indictment, sending Normal Cienfuegos again to Mexico.

The episode not solely broken longtime safety preparations between the 2 nations, but additionally left a deep impression on regulation enforcement officers north of the border, a lot of whom noticed the failed case as a cautionary story about enterprise comparable efforts towards different high-ranking Mexican officers.

Emiliano Rodríguez Mega contributed reporting.