Via ksat.com (San Antonio, TX) - May 10th -
The reported discovery in cartel hands of a sheaf of police documents containing agents' names and contact numbers, along with apparent references to shared U.S. intelligence data, has renewed fears of high-level corruption in Mexico's war on drugs.
The trove of papers -- which also included an apparent drug cartel payroll listing police commanders -- was found in the car of an associate of Mexico's most powerful drug lord, Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, during a May 2009 bust, the newspaper Reforma said Monday.
The papers appeared to be internal documents, possibly memos or registers, from Mexico's federal Public Safety Department and were listed as evidence of criminal charges, copies of which were obtained by Reforma.
The newspaper did not say how it obtained the documents, and the spokesman for the Attorney General's Office, Ricardo Najera, said he could neither confirm nor deny their authenticity. The Public Safety Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The list reportedly included the names and postings of federal police officials. One annotation, apparently made by traffickers, describes some investigations said to originate from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.
Coming less than two years after a widespread corruption probe known as "Operation Clean House" toppled Mexico's former anti-drug czar -- Noe Ramirez -- and other top officials for allegedly collaborating with a drug cartel, the revelation raised questions about whether Mexican law enforcement has really been cleaned up.
"Operation Clean House was a warning that something wasn't working, and this confirms that it still isn't working," said Jorge Chabat, a Mexican expert on drug cartels.
The documents would have let traffickers know which police officials were posted to key trafficking routes, and could have allowed criminals to contact or threaten the agents. One annotation in a pay book written in what appears to be code mentions soldiers and police who purportedly got payments; one is listed with the letters "PFP," an apparent reference to federal police.
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Hat-tip to my friend, Phn1x, for the link.
I think its pretty obvious that there is internal law enforcement / government cooperation with the cartels on both sides of the borders. Without the cooperation we wouldn't see the mass quantities of various substances so easily making it around the world.
ReplyDeleteThe "war on drugs" is a farce and will never be sucessful as there is far more profit in allowing it than there is in stopping it.