Mexican Tied to Gasoline Ring Is Arrested in U.S.

U.S. authorities have arrested the alleged leader of a Mexican gasoline smuggling network, and authorities want to question him in the death of a crusading journalist who exposed widespread corruption in Mexico’s state-owned oil monopoly, officials said Tuesday.

Martin Jesus Rojas Lopez, 41, was being held at a federal detention center in Houston, said Luisa Deason, a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman.

He is being held on immigration violations, Deason said, because he is in the United States illegally.

He was arrested Saturday at a relative’s home on the west side of Houston. Scott Hatfield, assistant special agent in charge of the area Immigration and Customs Enforcement office, said Rojas was arrested without incident. No weapons were found at the house.

Authorities were trying to determine how long Rojas had been in Houston and how he got here.

He has been known with some regularity to receive permits that allow him to travel to the United States, Hatfield said. Rojas was last known to be in the United States legally in February 2004, when he was in Las Vegas for several days.

This time, it appears that he overstayed a permit or sneaked across the border, Hatfield said.

Rojas will likely be deported and handed over to Mexican authorities, Deason said.

Rojas was arrested in Mexico in March 2004 on tax fraud charges; he disappeared after posting bond.

Mexican officials want to question Rojas in the killing of Raul Gibb Guerrero, owner and editor of the newspaper La Opinion in the Mexican state of Veracruz.

In April, four gunmen stopped Gibb while he was driving to his home in Papantla and shot him 15 times.

Gibb was one of three Mexican journalists believed killed that month in what government officials have called an effort by organized crime to silence the media.

Alfredo Jimenez Mota, a reporter at the newspaper El Imparcial in the northern city of Hermosillo, disappeared on his way to an interview. He had been writing investigative articles about drug trafficking; police fear he is dead.

And reporter Dolores Guadalupe Garcia Escamilla of the border city of Nuevo Laredo died after being shot nine times as she left the Estereo 91 radio station. She had been investigating municipal corruption.

Rojas has not been charged in connection with Gibb’s death. However, prosecutors in the state of Veracruz have issued an “order of presentation,” indicating that they would like to question him; the document is similar to a court summons.

For four years before his death, Gibb waged a campaign to persuade Mexico’s state-owned oil monopoly, Petroleos Mexicanos, to take action against an apparent fuel scheme that had begun in Veracruz and spread to eight Mexican states.

Petroleos Mexicanos, known as Pemex, loses more than $1 billion in sales each year to thieves, the Mexican government has acknowledged.

The oil giant is believed to be riddled with official corruption; it is also the major employer in the town of Poza Rica, a refining center near the Gulf of Mexico where Gibb’s family founded La Opinion half a century ago.

Rojas is the alleged leader of a gasoline smuggling ring in the town of Tihuatlan, near Poza Rica.

The complex of storage tanks and gasoline tankers was so large that locals called it Pemexito, or little Pemex.

Much of Gibb’s coverage exposing traffickers of stolen gasoline focused on Rojas’ “alternative fuels” business. The outfit allegedly involved taking stolen gas, often with the complicity of Pemex employees, adulterating it with junk additives and selling it.

The complex was shut down by federal authorities on environmental charges.

Sources close to the investigation into the slaying have said that before Rojas jumped bail, he made Gibb a plata o plomo offer -- a share of profits if Gibb stopped publishing, or a bullet if he did not. Gibb reportedly refused the deal.

Gold reported from Houston and Kraul from Mexico City.