Suspected Tie-Ins of Police With Traffickers Roil Mexico

Even by Mexican standards of corruption, the case was jolting: In an apparent sting operation, police nabbed as a suspect the top federal law enforcement official overseeing the border drug-trafficking hub of Ciudad Juarez.

Norberto Suarez Gomez, the Mexican attorney general’s chief representative in the state of Chihuahua, was arrested Dec. 30 on suspicion of trying to sell a law enforcement job for nearly half a million dollars.

The case unleashed a far-reaching investigation of narcotics-related corruption among national police in the state. It has seized the spotlight again after Chihuahua’s governor was shot Wednesday, allegedly by a former state police officer, in an apparent assassination attempt.

The governor, Patricio Martinez, suffered a moderately serious wound when a bullet grazed him but is expected to make a full recovery. Investigators said his assailant, who reportedly has a history of violence, most likely acted alone. But the Mexican media afterward were buzzing with speculation that the shooting had something to do with Suarez’s arrest.

Martinez recently had been critical of alleged federal foot-dragging on the case, and only a few days earlier, Mexican Atty. Gen. Rafael Macedo de la Concha had flown to Chihuahua to discuss the investigation with Martinez.

For the new national government, the Suarez case offers a chance to demonstrate resolve in the battle against graft. After the attempt on the governor’s life, President Vicente Fox and Interior Minister Santiago Creel reaffirmed their zeal to pursue wrongdoing in Chihuahua, wherever the trail might lead.

So far, the arrests of Suarez, who also worked with U.S. officials on border issues, and of his second in command, Jose Manuel Diaz Perez, the deputy director of the federal judicial police in Chihuahua, have been followed by the removal of 15 officers beneath them, Macedo’s office reported.

The large sum of money involved and the high-level position that Suarez occupied suggest that drug-related corruption has permeated the federal police in Chihuahua “as far as its highest officials,” Macedo said.

The case also presents some of the strongest evidence since the early 1990s that a traditional form of corruption in Mexico--the sale of government jobs--still occurs, said Stanley Pimentel, a former Mexico legal attache for the FBI.

Representatives of the U.S. attorney in El Paso did not return phone calls regarding the case, and Drug Enforcement Administration officials in Washington declined to comment. Mexican officials have offered scant information beyond what they presented in a brief statement.

The case indicates that Mexican drug-trafficking proceeds have reached such sums that organized-crime bosses can offer single bribes equaling many times the annual salaries of officials. Despite recent efforts to curb corruption, the temptation of this lucre remains a constant menace to clean government.

Mexican officials were presented with yet another vivid example of this phenomenon Friday, when, in an apparently unrelated case, reputed drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman Loera escaped from a maximum security prison, reportedly by hiding in a laundry truck.

Prison authorities are suspected of aiding in Guzman’s escape, prompting one high-level Mexican official to tell the newspaper Reforma that the power of narco-traffic has now rendered vulnerable “our institutions, and all of our society.”

To some, this isn’t news. Suarez’s arrest, in particular, “wasn’t so surprising. What’s surprising is that there are not more cases coming out,” said Jorge Chabat, an international relations professor at the Center for Research and Teaching on Economics in Mexico City.

“Narco-traffic is not a traditional crime. It is not gangs. It is not Bonnie and Clyde. It is not the Chicago mafia,” he added. “The governments don’t understand this. They think it is Al Capone all over again. It is much more powerful. . . . There is no system to combat this.”

Moreover, the practice of selling government jobs is a tradition with a long history in Mexico, said Pimentel, the former FBI legal attache.

“Basically, it goes back to colonial times,” he said. “Before about 1994, the sale of top posts in Tijuana or [Ciudad] Juarez could command $3 million for a one-time fee, or a rental or monthly fee of up to $1 million.”

The Suarez case broke Dec. 29, when the top military prosecutor informed civilian authorities of a tip from Diaz Perez, Suarez’s deputy, authorities said. The following day, in an apparent sting, federal investigators caught Suarez “red-handed,” as the statement put it, with Diaz Perez on the street behind the federal police agency. Suarez was allegedly in the process of selling Diaz Perez a position different from the one he held. It was not made clear what job Suarez was allegedly selling or why. The investigators reportedly seized $497,200.

Diaz Perez then asked that he be granted witness-protection status for having tipped off officials. But that request was denied on the grounds that he allegedly had not provided complete information. Both men, according to the statement from the office of Macedo, the federal attorney general, are under house arrest.

Besides holding a high-level post, Suarez also worked with U.S. counterparts as an ex officio member of the Border Liaison Mechanism in Ciudad Juarez/El Paso, according to Nida Emmons, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Consulate in Ciudad Juarez.

That group is a committee that includes officials and volunteers from both sides of the border who meet periodically to try to resolve such mutual concerns as law enforcement problems. Suarez attended a committee meeting as recently as October, Emmons said. Other State Department officials did not return phone calls.

Prior to Wednesday’s attempt on his life, Gov. Martinez was quoted by Mexican news media as criticizing the previous federal attorney general, Jorge Madrazo Cuellar, and former President Ernesto Zedillo for not responding earlier to concerns raised by state officials about the federal police. He told the daily Reforma that federal authorities even grew annoyed with him for his constant questions about the quality of appointees in Chihuahua. But after meeting with Macedo, he said he was optimistic.

Pimentel said he believes that new efforts by the Mexican government to root out such corruption will prove successful.

“[But] they are trying to correct something that has gone on for a number of years,” he said, “and you can’t do it overnight.”

Macedo said that the main drug operation in the vicinity of Ciudad Juarez is the Carrillo Fuentes cartel but that there are other organized-crime groups struggling for control of the drug routes in the region, including Tijuana and Gulf Coast mafias. That explains the high level of violence locally, he said, noting that cooperation with U.S. authorities would be key to combating the problem.