Mexico’s Former Prosecutor Linked to Cartel, Source Says

The government said Wednesday that it has evidence linking former Deputy Atty. Gen. Mario Ruiz Massieu to a drug cartel and believes that a major political scandal is related to tens of millions of dollars in alleged cartel payoffs to him and other officials.

An official source, with direct access to a government inquiry, said evidence is being uncovered by U.S. and Mexican authorities to indicate that Ruiz Massieu, once the nation’s top anti-narcotics enforcer, worked with other prominent Mexicans associated with former President Carlos Salinas de Gortari to assist international drug-trafficking operations on Mexican territory. Nothing has linked the former president to the corruption, the source added.

Investigators are trying to determine if Ruiz Massieu’s alleged drug-trafficking link played a role in the Sept. 28 assassination of his brother, Francisco Ruiz Massieu, who was secretary general of Mexico’s ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party. Salinas’ brother, Raul Salinas de Gortari, has been charged with helping to mastermind that assassination.

Mario Ruiz Massieu, who has been charged in Mexico with covering up Raul Salinas’ alleged involvement in the assassination of Francisco Ruiz Massieu, is in American custody. He was arrested in Newark, N.J., Friday and faces U.S. charges of failing to properly declare all the cash he was carrying.

The source said authorities let Ruiz Massieu leave the country in hopes that he would reveal the existence of bank accounts where he was believed to have stashed “tens of millions of dollars” in payoffs from the powerful Gulf Cartel.