Mexico’s Former Defense Minister Is Arrested in Los Angeles

10/16/2020

Source: New York Times

MEXICO CITY — A former Mexican defense minister was arrested on Thursday night after arriving at Los Angeles International Airport with his family, according to the Mexican government, becoming the first high-ranking military official to be taken into custody in the United States in connection with drug-related corruption in his country.

The former official, Gen. Salvador Cienfuegos Zepeda, who was Mexico’s defense minister from 2012 to 2018, was arrested by American officials at the request of the Drug Enforcement Administration and will face drug and money-laundering charges in the United States, according to a federal law enforcement official in New York.

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Mexican Leader Vowed to End Corruption, but Some Ask: ‘What Is Different Now?’

09/15/2020

Source: The Wall Street Journal

MEXICO CITY—The grainy video looks like something from a surveillance camera. Two men sit at a booth in a restaurant in southern Mexico. One man calmly slides a paper bag full of cash across the table to a man sitting across from him. Both keep talking, as if nothing has happened.

The video would be unremarkable if one of the men weren’t Pío López Obrador, the younger brother of Mexico’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, a leftist nationalist who has framed his political career as a crusade to end endemic corruption.

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Amid covid-19, recession and violence, Mexico’s López Obrador takes aim at his predecessors

09/22/2020

Source: The Washington Post

MEXICO CITY — For decades, Mexico’s presidents have handed over power peacefully at the end of their six-year terms. And in contrast to some of their Latin American counterparts, they have been left alone to pursue quiet, comfortable retirements, free of the fear of being held accountable for any misdeeds they might have committed while in office.

Now President Andrés Manuel López Obrador is threatening to shatter that tradition, accusing his five immediate predecessors of corruption or unfair economic policies — and seeking public approval to bring them to justice.

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Amid covid-19, recession and violence, Mexico’s López Obrador takes aim at his predecessors

09/22/2020

Source: The Washington Post

MEXICO CITY — For decades, Mexico’s presidents have handed over power peacefully at the end of their six-year terms. And in contrast to some of their Latin American counterparts, they have been left alone to pursue quiet, comfortable retirements, free of the fear of being held accountable for any misdeeds they might have committed while in office.

Now President Andrés Manuel López Obrador is threatening to shatter that tradition, accusing his five immediate predecessors of corruption or unfair economic policies — and seeking public approval to bring them to justice.

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AMLO Attacks ‘Filthy Rag’ That Linked His Family Member to Graft

09/14/2020

Source: Bloomberg

Mexico’s president called one of the nation’s largest newspapers a “filthy rag” after it linked his sister-in-law to a graft scandal.

President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador attacked Reforma newspaper after it reported that several officials from his hometown, including his relative, were forced to step down in a corruption sweep. AMLO, as the president is known, says the allegations haven’t been proved.

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Mexican voices: 1 year into the López Obrador presidency

Photo by Ricardo Esquivel on Pexels.com

12/01/19 – AP News

By Amy Guthrie

Andrés Manuel López Obrador has been president of Mexico for a year, after a landslide 2018 vote. He pledged a presidency close to the people, austere, with punishment for the corrupt and greater safety and economic well-being.

Not all has gone according to plan. The country’s murder rate continues to log record highs, while economic growth this year has been flat and borders on recession. Corruption and crime remain difficult plagues to eradicate, though the administration has taken on some high-profile targets.

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Mexico mulls human trafficking overhaul that may protect sex workers

11/15/19 – Reuters

By Christine Murray

Sex workers could benefit from plans to reform Mexico’s much-criticized human trafficking law, outlined in an interior ministry document obtained by the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Commercial sex is legal in Mexico but people who gain from prostitution, such as landlords and pimps, can be jailed under the 2012 law, while sex workers are also often wrongly swept up in police raids, Mexican trafficking campaigners say.

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A general was the leading suspect in the biggest anti-corruption case in Mexico. Then he disappeared.

11/10/19 – The Washington Post

By Kevin Sieff

It was the third hearing in one of Mexico’s biggest corruption cases in years, but the general accused of abetting billions of dollars in oil theft was nowhere to be seen.

 

Judge Angélica Lucio Rosales looked out at the crowd of lawyers and family members in the federal courtroom, unimpressed.

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Mexico’s president under pressure over ‘hugs not bullets’ cartel policy

11/05/19 – The Guardian

By Jo Tuckman

Mexico’s president Andrés Manuel López Obrador is under sustained pressure to rethink his non-confrontational security strategy amid lingering questions over the botched arrest of a son of Joaquin “el Chapo” Guzmán.

Ovidio Guzmán was briefly held in the northern city of Culiacán last month, but was freed after hundreds of gunmen launched a wave of attacks on security forces and blocked roads with burning vehicles.

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London police detain jailed former Mexican governor’s wife; faces extradition trial

10/29/19 – Reuters

By Anthony Esposito

Police in London on Tuesday detained Karime Macias, the wife of a disgraced former Mexican state governor who is serving a 9-year jail sentence for money laundering and links to organized crime, a spokesman for Mexico’s attorney general’s office said.

Macias will now face an extradition trial in Britain, the spokesman said.

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