Skip to main content

Cancun mayor arrested on drug charges


Tuesday, June 01, 2010


CANCUN, Mexico -- Mexican federal police have arrested the mayor of the resort city of Cancun on drug trafficking, money laundering and organized crime charges.

Gregorio Sanchez, who took a leave of absence from his mayoral post to run for governor of the Caribbean coastal state of Quintana Roo, was taken into custody at Cancun's international airport after arriving on a flight from Mexico City.

While Mexico's 2010 elections have been marred by violence and allegations of drug cartel involvement, officials said they could not immediately remember another case in which a gubernatorial candidate has been arrested on drug charges.

"This takes us all by surprise, it is unprecedented," said current Quintana Roo Gov. Felix Gonzalez Cantu.

Ricardo Najera, a spokesman for the federal Attorney General's Office, said the charges allege Sanchez played a role in fomenting or aiding drug trafficking.

Sanchez's website published an article in which the candidate for the leftist Democratic Revolution Party and two smaller parties said he was being persecuted for political reasons.

The site quoted Sanchez as saying he had been threatened. "Resign from the race, or we are going to put you in jail or kill you," Sanchez said in describing one of the threats.

A Twitter account linked to the site vowed to continue Sanchez's campaign and asked people to protest his arrest and vote for him.

Sanchez, a populist who pledged to bring services to the impoverished majority of residents who live on the outskirts of the glittering resort, took on the established and entrenched political machine of the long-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party.

The political fight in the state has been bitter -- soldiers discovered two apartments fitted out with equipment for telephone eavesdropping, that local media said may be linked to political espionage. But drug cartels have long been active in the state, as well.

In 2009, prosecutors arrested Cancun's police chief, Francisco Velasco, to investigate whether he protected the Zetas drug gang.

Velasco had already been detained for questioning in the killing of retired Brig. Gen. Mauro Enrique Tello, whose bullet-riddled body was found in a car in early 2009, shortly after the Cancun city government hired him as a security consultant to combat local corruption and asked him to set up the elite force.

Quintana Roo state, where Cancun is located, has seen its share of officials detained for allegedly aiding drug cartels, including a former governor who was arrested just after he left office and sentenced to 36 years for money laundering and helping a drug cartel smuggle narcotics.

Bundles of cocaine sometimes wash ashore in the region because smugglers drop drugs from boats or small planes for gangs to retrieve and move into the U.S.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Director Jailed for Tax Evasion

A Bay of Plenty company director was today jailed for four years jail for tax evasion of more than $700,000 Harbhajan Singh Kahlon was earlier found guilty in Tauranga District Court of 23 charges of GST-related tax fraud and later admitted a further 46 charges of tax evasion involving PAYE. The Inland Revenue Department said in a statement today that Kahlon's business was to supply labour for vine management, squash picking and kiwifruit picking in and around Tauranga, Te Puke and Palmerston North. The scam involved Kahlon, as head contractor and director of his company Kalgidhar Enterprises, engaging 39 sub-contractors as "invoice writers", to supply him with false documents to falsify GST returns filed with the IRD. Falsified documents helped to create a paper trail when Kahlon and his company claimed extra tax credits, as well as evading the assessment and payment of GST by submitting invoices for work purported to have been sub-contracted out when it was not, or ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Anti-corruption academy opens in Austria

Thu Sep 2, 2:38 PM By The Associated Press VIENNA - An international anti-corruption academy, billed as the first of its kind, has opened in Austria.Officials say the aim of the new facility in the Vienna suburb of Laxenburg is to serve as a place for research, training, networking and the development of policies to prevent and battle corruption. It is a joint initiative of the Vienna-based United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, the European Anti-Fraud Office, Austria and others. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Thursday at a conference marking the academy's inauguration that fighting corruption was a "shared responsibility" and pledged full support to the new institution. He urged others to do the same. A full program of classes and activities is scheduled to start next year. ____ Online: IACA: http://www.iaca-info.org/
Post a Comment
Read more

Tackling political corruption here requires at the minimum a reconceptualizing of the Integrity Commission

By Stabroek staff July 23, 2010 in Letters Dear Editor, In 1968 Samuel Huntington argued that by greasing the wheels of the economy and so removing bureaucratic and other practices that impede investments and development, political corruption is efficiency-enhancing and inevitable (“Political Order in Changing Societies”). However, notwithstanding Huntington and others, national societies caught in the spiral of massive political plunder (see following table) rejected this view. Estimates of Funds Embezzled by Heads of Government Heads of Government Funds Embezzled Mohamed Suharto, President of Indonesia, 1967-98 US $15 to 35 billion Ferdinand Marcos, President of Philippines, 1972-86 US $5 to 10 billion Mobutu Sese Seko, President of Zaire, 1965-97 US $5 billion Sani Abacha, President of Nigeria, 1993-98 US $2 to 5 billion Slobodan Milosevic, President of Serbia/Yugoslavia, 1989-2000 US $1 billion Jean-Claude Duvalier, President of Haiti, 1971-86 US $300 to 800 million Alber...
Post a Comment
Read more