Documents and interviews reveal that Mexican drug traffickers extradited to the US continued to claim that they had sent money to President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s 2006 campaign, but these allegations were not pursued by investigators.
The Justice Department closed the secret inquiry into allegations that drug traffickers had funded López Obrador’s first presidential campaign in 2011. However, over the years that followed, US law enforcement agencies continued to receive reports from at least four high-level Mexican traffickers who claimed their gangs helped fund López Obrador’s political machine in return for promises of government protection.
Despite these claims, US investigators did not pursue the allegations due to a lack of support in Washington for a corruption case against an important Mexican political leader. Current and former officials said that there was little appetite to push forward with the case.
López Obrador lost his first presidential race in 2006 and again in 2012 before winning election in 2018. During his presidency, he has been a sharp critic of his predecessors’ US-backed “war” on drug traffickers and promised to use social programs to dissuade young Mexicans from joining the mafias. However, organized crime has flourished under his leadership.
The president denies that his campaign took money from the traffickers and blames recent reports about the DEA inquiry on a conspiracy to weaken his political party ahead of national elections. Concerns about possible mafia ties to at least one member of his 2006 campaign staff have also emerged within his own government.
The candidate of López Obrador’s party won the presidential race by a landslide, signaling that she will follow similar policies in dealing with organized crime. The DEA investigation began in April 2010 and ended when the Justice Department rejected a proposed sting operation inside Mexico aimed at López Obrador’s political team.
After Justice Department officials closed the inquiry into drug traffickers who were captured in Mexico and extradited to the United States, several high-profile drug traffickers offered investigators further information about their dealings with López Obrador’s political operation. However, according to previously undisclosed government documents and interviews with over a dozen current and former U.S. officials, nearly all that information was filed away or ignored.
Although details of the case were closely held, it was known that an investigation into López Obrador’s campaign had been aborted due to concerns about the impact on the U.S.-Mexico relationship. Additionally, investigators said they were more focused on extracting information from traffickers about their mafia associates and drug trafficking activities.
One of the traffickers who offered information was Edgar Valdez Villareal, also known as “La Barbie,” who donated $2 million to López Obrador’s campaign. He was captured by Mexican authorities in 2010 but did not provide significant information until he and his lieutenants were extradited.
Sergio Villarreal Barragán, a former police officer known as “El Grande,” provided the most substantial information to American investigators. According to unnamed sources, El Grande told senior Mexican prosecutors and DEA agents that he had personally delivered $500,000 to López Obrador in June 2006, near the end of his election campaign.
However, a previously unpublished DEA report reviewed by ProPublica makes no mention of this assertion. Instead, it quotes El Grande as saying he was interested in cooperating with the U.S. Government and would provide valuable information on high-ranking Mexican government officials.
Several former officials said that it was not uncommon for American law enforcement agents in Mexico to edit out allegations of high-level corruption from reports they knew would be shared with other U.S. agencies. Officials familiar with the López Obrador campaign inquiry said they never heard El Grande claim to have personally delivered cash to the candidate.
El Grande did start talking more openly about Mexican corruption on the extradition flight that took him to Texas in May 2012, officials said. He described huge bribes to senior officials and confirmed he attended a meeting at which La Barbie agreed to fund López Obrador’s campaign. However, he was not questioned in detail about those donations because the DEA’s investigation had already been shut down.
Three years after El Grande’s former boss La Barbie was extradited to Atlanta and confirmed some aspects of the 2006 donations, officials stated. However, investigators did not question him in-depth about López Obrador because the DEA’s inquiry was far enough in the past, and they also viewed his memory as unreliable, deciding not to use him as a witness in García Luna’s corruption trial last year.
Another Sinaloa trafficker, Jesús Reynaldo Zambada García, has testified in two high-profile New York trials that his faction of the syndicate donated millions of dollars to López Obrador’s political apparatus. His accounts have been vague and fragmented, partly because federal prosecutors sought to limit his testimony about Mexican corruption.
Until his capture by Mexican authorities in 2008, Zambada oversaw the syndicate’s operations in Mexico City, including paying elaborate layers of bribes to safeguard cocaine flights that landed in and near the capital. During El Chapo’s trial in 2018, Zambada testified that the gang paid a top security official “a few million dollars” in 2005 when López Obrador was Mexico City’s mayor.
In another trial last year, Zambada confirmed that he had told US investigators that his group paid López Obrador’s aide $3 million. The claim made headlines in Mexico where both López Obrador and Regino denied it. However, a previously unpublished document reviewed by ProPublica shows that Zambada did make such a claim or that the Homeland Security agent who summarized his debriefing on July 6, 2013, might have confused one conservative president with another.
Current and former US officials stated that some extradited members of other Mexican trafficking groups, including the Gulf cartel and the Zetas, told investigators that their gangs also contributed to López Obrador’s 2006 campaign. One such trafficker, Osiel Cárdenas Guillén, told agents soon after being extradited to Houston in 2007 that his organization had given money to López Obrador’s campaign as well as to government security officials. However, investigators did not ask Cárdenas about these purported bribes in detail because they thought there was little chance the Justice Department would try to prosecute a corruption case. An attorney for Cárdenas declined to comment on the report.
Although President López Obrador has consistently denied any evidence of his 2006 campaign’s ties to drug traffickers, documents from his own government reveal that Mexico’s Defense Minister had serious concerns about a staff member who worked closely with him during the election.
The document highlights the case of retired army colonel Silvio Hernández Soto, one of López Obrador’s senior bodyguards in 2006 and later became a focus of scrutiny for both DEA investigators and Mexican prosecutors. A DEA informant claimed that he had been introduced to Hernández by traffickers and sought his help in arranging military protection for drug flights through the Cancún airport.
Despite being arrested and accused of involvement with organized crime, Hernández was eventually released and went on to serve as a senior police official in western Sinaloa state. When López Obrador took office in 2018, Hernández was appointed to a sensitive position within the Mexican attorney general’s office. However, Defense Minister Gen. Luis Cresencio Sandoval sought to block the appointment due to “documentary evidence” showing Hernández maintained ties with members of organized crime.
The letter from the Defense Minister also highlighted that the official who had recommended Hernández for the position was none other than López Obrador’s intelligence chief, retired Gen. Audomaro Martínez, who had worked closely with him during his 2006 campaign. The president’s spokesperson did not comment on why Martínez had recommended Hernández.
It is worth noting that despite these concerns and allegations, Hernández was not ultimately hired to the attorney general’s office or any other post in López Obrador’s government. A lawyer for Hernández did not respond to messages seeking comment.
Overall, this document reveals a discrepancy between López Obrador’s repeated denials of any ties to drug traffickers during his 2006 campaign and the serious concerns raised by Mexico’s Defense Minister about a staff member who worked closely with him at the time. The case highlights the need for transparency and accountability in government appointments and positions.
Source: Pro Publica
