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Drug Traffickers Said They Backed an Early Campaign of Mexico's President. But U.S. Agents Were Done Investigating.
https://www.propublica.org/article/mexico-drug-traffickers-dea-investigation-amlo-campaignDrug Traffickers Said They Backed an Early Campaign of Mexico’s President. But U.S. Agents Were Done Investigating.
Documents and interviews show that Mexican traffickers extradited to the U.S. continued to tell of drug money sent to President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s 2006 campaign, but those allegations were not pursued.
by Tim Golden
July 19, 5:05 a.m. EDT
When the Justice Department shut down a secret inquiry into allegations that drug traffickers had funded the first presidential campaign of Mexico’s leader, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, officials in Washington closed the case forcefully.
Over the years that followed that 2011 decision, U.S. law enforcement agencies continued to hear similar reports, including accounts from at least four high-level Mexican traffickers who said their gangs helped to fund López Obrador’s political machine in return for promises of government protection, documents and interviews show.
[...]
“We took our best shot, and they didn’t want to do the case,” one former investigator for the Drug Enforcement Administration said of the 18-month inquiry into López Obrador’s 2006 campaign. “That was it; nobody had any appetite to push it forward.”
[...]
Documents and interviews show that Mexican traffickers extradited to the U.S. continued to tell of drug money sent to President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s 2006 campaign, but those allegations were not pursued.
by Tim Golden
July 19, 5:05 a.m. EDT
When the Justice Department shut down a secret inquiry into allegations that drug traffickers had funded the first presidential campaign of Mexico’s leader, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, officials in Washington closed the case forcefully.
Over the years that followed that 2011 decision, U.S. law enforcement agencies continued to hear similar reports, including accounts from at least four high-level Mexican traffickers who said their gangs helped to fund López Obrador’s political machine in return for promises of government protection, documents and interviews show.
[...]
“We took our best shot, and they didn’t want to do the case,” one former investigator for the Drug Enforcement Administration said of the 18-month inquiry into López Obrador’s 2006 campaign. “That was it; nobody had any appetite to push it forward.”
[...]
============
https://www.propublica.org/article/mexico-amlo-dea-probe-cartel-campaign-donations
Inside the Risky U.S. Probe of Allegations That Drug Mafias Financed a Campaign of Mexico’s President López Obrador
by Tim Golden
July 19, 5 a.m. EDT
[...]
In the summer of 2010, as U.S. agents dug into allegations that a powerful drug mafia had poured money into Mexican politics, the investigators took direct aim at the man who is now the country’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
According to confidential government documents obtained by ProPublica, the Drug Enforcement Administration knowingly risked a political furor to try to penetrate López Obrador’s campaign organization before Mexicans could elect a government that might be beholden to the traffickers.
The investigators initially had remarkable success, co-opting a midlevel campaign operative to act as a DEA mole inside López Obrador’s political team. They then drew up an audacious plan for a sting operation in which an undercover operative would offer the campaign millions of dollars in exchange for future protection, the documents show.
But that plan never went forward. The inquiry was shut down by senior Justice Department officials in late 2011, as the attorney general, Eric Holder, came under heavy political fire for the failure of another undercover operation in Mexico, a gun-tracking effort known as the “Fast and Furious” case.
[...]
by Tim Golden
July 19, 5 a.m. EDT
[...]
In the summer of 2010, as U.S. agents dug into allegations that a powerful drug mafia had poured money into Mexican politics, the investigators took direct aim at the man who is now the country’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
According to confidential government documents obtained by ProPublica, the Drug Enforcement Administration knowingly risked a political furor to try to penetrate López Obrador’s campaign organization before Mexicans could elect a government that might be beholden to the traffickers.
The investigators initially had remarkable success, co-opting a midlevel campaign operative to act as a DEA mole inside López Obrador’s political team. They then drew up an audacious plan for a sting operation in which an undercover operative would offer the campaign millions of dollars in exchange for future protection, the documents show.
But that plan never went forward. The inquiry was shut down by senior Justice Department officials in late 2011, as the attorney general, Eric Holder, came under heavy political fire for the failure of another undercover operation in Mexico, a gun-tracking effort known as the “Fast and Furious” case.
[...]