Free Republic

Mexico's $250 million in Frozen Drug Cartel Assets is Chump Change. When a 1960s US Congressman died with $3.5 million under his bed, a that time it was a cause for outrage. But now, the US and Mexican political cultures have both come to accept that politics is a path to riches. "You can't get rich in politics unless you're a crook", Kansas City mob-boss Tom Pendergast associate, President Harry S Truman allegedly remarked. A Google response to the question "how much is Obama worth", openly admits, $40 million.Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador says Mexico will deal with Narcotraficantes...

Former Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto took a $100 million bribe from international drug traffickers, according to a witness at the trial of Joaquín Guzmán Loera, the infamous crime lord known as El Chapo. The stunning testimony was delivered Tuesday in a New York courtroom by Alex Cifuentes Villa, a Colombian drug lord who worked closely with Mr. Guzmán from 2007 to 2013, when they were hiding from the authorities at one of the kingpin’s remote ranches in the Sierra Madre mountains. “Mr. Guzmán paid a bribe of $100 million to President Peña Nieto?” Jeffrey Lichtman, one of Mr. Guzmán’s...

The jailed drug cartel boss Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman is receiving self-help advice and gaining weight under his tightened prison regime, according to a Mexican government official, although he is no longer allowed conjugal visits or supplied with Viagra. . . Before he escaped, Guzman was allowed a four-hour conjugal visit every nine days. In addition, the officials said, he was supplied with Viagra.

Guzman’s attorney says the drug lord will plead guilty once he arrives if his lawyer can negotiate a “reasonable sentence” in addition to the medium security detention. The attorney, Jose Refugio Rodriguez, said he discussed the idea with the kingpin during a meeting on February 15. He said Guzman asked him to get in touch with a U.S. lawyer to discuss the process. Guzman, the purported leader of the Sinaloa cartel, has broken out of Mexican maximum-security prisons two times. He slipped out of the Altiplano prison in July through a mile-long tunnel dug under the prison, but was recaptured...

Sean Penn's "secret interview" inadvertently led authorities to arrest El Chapo despite security precautions. What pun name can you give him based on his role names, movie titles, girlfriend dramas or public statements?

On June 25, the United States issued a formal request to the Mexican government for the extradition of Joaquín Guzmán Loera, known as Chapo, who was being held at Mexico’s highest security prison. On July 11, less than three weeks later, Guzmán Loera released himself from the supposedly impregnable prison in President Enrique Peña Nieto’s home state, by means of a sixty-foot-deep tunnel that had apparently been dug from a half-built house a mile away, directly into the shower of his prison cell. Guzmán, of course, had been transferred to the Almoloya prison immediately after his capture eighteen months earlier,...

He was part of the team that helped put one of Mexico's most violent drug lords behind bars – the same one who escaped from a Mexican maximum-security prison over the weekend. Tuesday, KOB talked to Michael Vigil, a former DEA agent from New Mexico who investigated Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman for years. Vigil says Guzman's escape is not good for the U.S., especially our state. He says Guzman wants to push out the Juarez Cartel and push more heroin through New Mexico. "Chapo Guzman has taken over that area and he controls most of the routes into the United...

Donald Trump on Sunday blasted "corrupt Mexican officials" for letting a notorious drug kingpin escape from a maximum security prison. Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman escaped the prison by riding a motorcycle through a mile-long tunnel that was connected to the shower area of Guzman's cell. It is his second escape, and prison employees are being questioned. Trump noted that the last time Guzman escaped he was free for 13 years. "He has been selling drugs in the U.S. big-time – a major kingpin," he said in a statement sent to the media. "He is possibly in the U.S. and his...

The Mexican president in the Dock? Well, not yet, but charges of “crimes against humanity” were filed last Friday in the International Criminal Court in the Netherlands against President Felipe Calderón, the Secretaries of Mexico’s Army, Navy, and Public Safety, and notorious drug trafficker Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán. The International Criminal Court (denhaag.nl)The charges were filed by human rights lawyer Netzaí Sandoval, supported by 23,000 citizen signatures, and allege, among other things, that the Mexican state bears direct responsibility for crimes committed by federal agents in the context of the war against organized crime. The charges detail 470 cases of...

WASHINGTON — Paramilitary enforcers for Mexican drug cartels are responsible for a wave of violence in Nuevo Laredo that poses a serious threat for residents on both sides of the Southwest border, U.S. law enforcement officials told a House committee Thursday. Assassinations, kidnappings and daylight shootouts between military-trained gangs place citizens at risk along the border where violence has soared past historical norms, officials said. "These paramilitary groups work for the cartels as enforcers and are a serious threat to public safety on both sides of the border," said Chris Swecker, the FBI assistant director for the criminal investigative division....