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Interpol chief in Mexico held for drug cartel ties

by Sanjay Jha | November 18, 2008 at 11:16 pm

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Mexico has deep rooted high-level corruption within security forces battling powerful drug cartels. Mexican government has started a “Operation Clean House,” which aims to weed out corruption that came to light after the January arrest of Alfredo Beltran Leyva and under the scheme many corrupt officers have been netted. Few weeks back government had arrested

Rodolfo de la Guardia Garcia, the No. 2 official in the Federal Agency of Investigation from 2003-2005. Now reports are coming that Mexico arrested its head of Interpol on Tuesday for allegedly working for a powerful drug cartel and sent the military to take over police duties in the city of Tijuana in another step to flush out corrupt law enforcement.

Ricardo Gutierrez Vargas, the Federal Investigation Agency's International Police Affairs and Interpol director, was arrested Sunday as part of ‘Operation Clean-up’, a government crackdown on corrupt police. Four members of Special Organized Crime Investigation Division (SIEDO), including its intelligence chief, have been arrested since the operation got underway in July, and 35 other members have been sacked, the attorney general's office said.
Investigators said the drug cartels were paying some suspect police officers between 150,000 and 450,000 dollars a month for information.

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Amitjha

at 23:26 on November 18th, 2008

Drugs industry cannot survive without the support of intellgence network backup. Same is the story of Afganistan and Myanmar, where the authority support the cartel for various socio-economic purposes.