Posted on 04/04/2008 11:06:59 AM PDT by SwinneySwitch
MEXICO CITY — Mexican federal police in the border city of Nuevo Laredo seized $6 million in cash Thursday after arresting five alleged paramilitary members at a Pan-American Highway checkpoint.
The seizure, officials said, marked the latest blow against the Gulf Cartel, the drug smuggling organization based in the Mexican cities bordering South Texas. Authorities said the arrested men are members of the Zetas, a paramilitary group of gunmen led by deserters from elite Mexican army units.
The five men were arrested at a checkpoint about 15 miles south of Nuevo Laredo. After their arrest, they led police to a safe house in the border city, where the cash was discovered in eight large suitcases, authorities said.
"This wasn't a coincidence. They were looking for them as suspected members of the Gulf Cartel," said Javier Ortiz, a Mexico City spokesman for the Federal Public Security Ministry, whose officers took part in the seizure.
Three of the arrested men were from Nuevo Laredo, authorities said, one was from the border city of Reynosa, and another from Veracruz state.
Based in Nuevo Laredo and other nearby border cities, the Gulf Cartel — with its assassins and bodyguards, the Zetas — became one of Mexico's most powerful trafficking organizations since the turn of the century.
The cartel has been involved in a bloody feud with rival trafficking gangs that has killed 3,500 people in the past 15 months, according to one Mexican newspaper's tally.
Nuevo Laredo, which borders Laredo, was a principal battleground three years ago when the Gulf Cartel fought with members of other trafficking gangs over control of the routes. But violence in the city has declined in recent months.
The Gulf Cartel's reputed leader, former police officer Osiel Cardenas, was extradited to the United States by the Mexican government 15 months ago and awaits trial in Houston on federal drug charges.
President Felipe Calderon of Mexico ordered thousands of police and soldiers in the border area bordering South Texas last December following the assassination of a former mayor of a border town near McAllen.
He has put 30,000 troops into the streets along the Texas border and in violence-plagued areas deep into Mexico's interior. Calderon last week ordered 3,000 police and soldiers to Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso, amid the continued violence in that city and others in Chihuahua state.
More than 200 people have been killed in underworld violence in Chihuahua so far this year, according to Mexican media tallies.
The military operations have done little to stem the violence. But they have led to record seizures of narcotics and proceeds from the trade.
Police last October seized 12 tons of cocaine said to belong to the Gulf Cartel in the port city of Tampico, on the Gulf Coast about 200 miles south of Brownsville. Authorities said another 23 tons of cocaine captured in the Pacific Coast port of Manzanillo belonged to the so-called Sinaloa Cartel, a major rival of the Gulf Coast organization.
Though Thursday's cash seizure is one of the largest hauls of its kind, it pales in comparison to the $205 million captured in March 2007 from the Mexico City mansion of a Chinese pharmaceutical importer.
Mexican authorities say the money was proceeds from illegally imported chemicals for methamphetamine.
The importer, who faces trial in the U.S., said the cash was illegal funds from Calderon's 2006 presidential campaign that government officials forced him to hide. Government officials have denied his accusations.
dqalthaus@yahoo.com
I know this is a serious story, but I can’t help but giggle when I think about living in a state named ‘Chihuahua’.
Thats a butt load of pesos...
Ping!
If you want on, or off this S. Texas/Mexico ping list, please FReepMail me.
Good friends of our open-border Washington pols. I hope they are real proud of themselves....
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