U.S. Targets Alleged Mexico Drug Kingpin

Atty. Gen. Janet Reno plans to announce today a new offensive against drug smuggling through Mexico and will dramatize the move by putting Mexico’s most notorious accused cocaine trafficker on the FBI’s Most Wanted List, officials said Wednesday.

American and Mexican officials have described the suspect, Juan Garcia Abrego, as the kingpin of Mexico’s Gulf Cartel based in the northeastern border city of Matamoros. The cartel is believed to handle most of the cocaine smuggled from Colombia to the United States via Mexico, which some law enforcement officials have estimated is worth $20 billion a year.

Mexican officials also have accused Garcia Abrego of ordering more than 35 murders as he built his trafficking empire.

The American Express International Bank, based in Beverly Hills, was fined $7 million last year after federal authorities traced $33 million in laundered drug money at the bank to Garcia Abrego.

Garcia Abrego has been wanted by both American and Mexican authorities for several years but has always eluded arrest--aided, officials believe, by political connections high in Mexico’s federal government.

Mexican officials have said that associates of Garcia Abrego appear to have participated in the assassination last year of Francisco Ruiz Massieu, the No. 2 leader of Mexico’s ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). Raul Salinas de Gortari, the elder brother of former President Carlos Salinas de Gortari, has been arrested and charged with helping to mastermind that killing.

Officials said it was highly unusual for the attorney general to make a point of announcing Garcia Abrego’s naming to the FBI list. Normally, the FBI merely issues a brief written notice. One effect of the public announcement will be to concentrate new pressure on Mexican authorities to find Garcia Abrego, one official noted.

Clinton Administration officials said they hope Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo’s crackdown on political corruption will lead to more cooperation in pursuing well-connected drug traffickers as well.

“We believe the government of Mexico is serious about combatting drug trafficking,” Undersecretary of State Peter Tarnoff told a congressional committee Tuesday. He said the two governments conducted a series of meetings in Mexico City last month and agreed to “intensify cooperation in combatting narcotics trafficking and apprehending and bringing fugitives to justice.”

But, he said, “There is certainly room for improved cooperation, particularly in the interdiction of cargo jets.” Colombia’s cocaine producers recently have shipped hundreds of tons of drugs into Mexico in big cargo jets, reportedly unloading their merchandise at airports under the eyes of cooperating police officials, U.S. aides said.

The cocaine is then smuggled overland or in smaller planes into the United States, often by Garcia Abrego’s organization, they said.

Times staff writer Ronald J. Ostrow in Washington contributed to this report.