Oct 27, 2008 1:20 pm US/Central
Mexico Drug Spy Allegedly Leaked DEA Info
MEXICO CITY (AP) ―
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The official says the man worked for Interpol at Mexico City's airport and at the U.S. Embassy and is now considered a protected witness. It is unclear if he is under Mexican or U.S. care.
KTVT / KTXA
A Mexican official says a drug spy is telling officials he infiltrated the U.S. Embassy and leaked DEA information to the Beltran-Leyva cartel.
The official says the man worked for Interpol at Mexico City's airport and at the U.S. Embassy and is now considered a protected witness. It is unclear if he is under Mexican or U.S. care.
The official insisted on anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the record.
The official says the man gave the information to Mexican Embassy officials in Washington. His statements are being investigated.
The Mexico City newspaper El Universal reported on Monday that the cartel informant said he had infiltrated the U.S. Embassy.
It said the informant told Mexican prosecutors that he had worked as a "criminal investigator" at the embassy and that he had passed along information on U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration operations in Mexico. The embassy had no immediate comment on the report.
The Beltran-Leyva cartel is the same organization that allegedly employed at least five agents of Mexico's Attorney General's Office for Organized Crime.
Employees of that unit charged with fighting organized crime allegedly were paid by members of the Beltran-Leyva cartel to pass along information on federal investigations of their organization and other traffickers.
Two top employees of the organized crime unit and at least three federal police agents assigned to it may have been passing information on surveillance targets and potential raids for at least four years, the unit's head, Assistant Attorney General Marisela Morales, told a news conference.
One of the officials was an assistant intelligence director and the other served as a liaison in requesting searches and assigning officers to carry them out.
All but one of the officials has been arrested.
The agents and officials received payments of between $150,000 and $450,000 per month for the information, Morales said.
The case represents the most serious known infiltration of anti-crime agencies since the 1997 arrest of Gen. Jesus Gutierrez Rebollo, the head of Mexico's anti-drug agency, who was later convicted of aiding drug lord Amado Carrillo Fuentes, who has since died.
The Beltran Leyva brothers are one of the groups that make up northern Mexico's Sinaloa cartel, the country's largest drug trafficking confederation.
Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora said that investigations were continuing to see whether any other informants had infiltrated prosecutors' offices.
Elsewhere, a U.S. official on Monday said American law enforcement arrested a top Mexican immigration official for carrying about 77 kilograms of marijuana.
The U.S. official identified the Mexican official as Francisco Celaya-Carrillo. The official said he was stopped in Lukeville, Ariz. Sunday afternoon, as he was coming into the country in a pickup truck to do some shopping and said that a Customs and Border Protection officer inspected the vehicle and found marijuana in the gas tank and in the spare tire.
The U.S. official, who declined to be publicly identified because no formal announcement had been made, said that Celaya-Carrillo was in uniform and told the Customs officer he was coming to the United States to do some shopping.
(© 2009 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
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