MEXICO CITY — The president of Mexico, Andrés Manual López Obrador, said in his morning conference this Wednesday that the allegations in a ProPublica report suggesting that the team of his first presidential campaign (2006) could have been false received at least two million dollars in cash from drug traffickers.
“It is completely false, it is slander.
They are, of course, very upset.
And unfortunately the press, as we have seen, not only in Mexico, but in the world, is very subordinated to power,” the president defended himself.
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The American journalist Tim Golden, of ProPublica, had access to an investigation carried out between 2010 and 2011 by the Federal Prosecutor's Office of the Southern District of New York and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in which witnesses assured that important drug traffickers channeled about 2 millions of dollars to López Obrador's first presidential campaign,
in exchange for the promise that his eventual Government would facilitate the criminal operations of traffickers
.
Based on more than a dozen interviews with US and Mexican officials, as well as US Government documents and witness testimonies, Golden tells in his report how the financing operation would have occurred, but clarified that the investigation did not determine
“whether López Obrador had approved the alleged donations from the traffickers, not even if he knew about them.”
However, the journalist assured that the officials he consulted during his work confirmed that the investigation (which was the product of the extensive cooperation of a former campaign operator and a drug trafficker turned informant) “produced evidence that one of the closest advisors of López Obrador had accepted the proposed agreement.”
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Golden noted that
the DEA agents' initial source was Roberto López Nájera
, a lawyer who in 2008 voluntarily showed up at the U.S. Embassy in Mexico asking to speak to someone from the DEA.
On that occasion he said that he had been a kind of legal advisor to Édgar Valdez Villarreal, alias
La Barbie
, and a key figure in the Beltrán Leyva cartel.
ProPublica attempted to contact López Nájera, who did not respond to multiple interview requests.
Noticias Telemundo tried to contact representatives of López Nájera and other people mentioned in the ProPublica report, but did not immediately receive responses.
“It seems that the evidence that the DEA and the Department of Justice claim to have are only supported by the statements of protected witnesses who, in many cases, are confessed criminals,” Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera, a specialist in criminal organizations and academic, told Noticias Telemundo. from George Mason University.
“What is the point of bringing this out without evidence?
Furthermore,
it is published in an election year where in the United States there is talk of declaring a war against the cartels
and this contributes to those interests,” she inquired.
López Obrador also insisted on this point in his morning session this Wednesday.
“There is no proof.
They are vile slanderers.
Even though they are rewarded as good journalists,” he said.
In an interview with Noticias Telemundo, Golden responded to the Mexican president's accusations by saying that he recommends readers consult the article and "draw their own conclusions."
Furthermore, he stated that López Obrador did not talk about “any details of the article,” but instead insisted that “we are apparatuses of power in the United States.
Obviously that is a vision of how journalism worked in Mexico and perhaps in other countries a long time ago.”
Golden also stated that it is clear to him that the United States Government is not interested in having these types of articles published “at a time when it is negotiating with Mexico about migration, fentanyl, and a series of other issues.”
The reporter insisted that his job is to “question power and try to get to the bottom of issues like this.”
Jesús Ramírez Cuevas, main spokesperson for the presidency of Mexico, also attacked the ProPublica report, on his account on the social network X.
“As if it were the DEA campaign against President López Obrador, three media outlets (from the US and Germany) publish the same information from the US agency to point out that people from AMLO's campaign in 2006 would have received drug money;
“There is no evidence that incriminates the president,” he wrote.
After seeking comment on ProPublica's investigation, the Justice Department told Noticias Telemundo that it “fully respects the sovereignty of Mexico,” and that it remains committed to working with Mexican authorities in the fight against drug cartels.
“It is our usual practice not to comment on the existence of any particular research activity.
“We consistently follow strict internal and oversight protocols to manage all sensitive international investigations,” he added.
A department official familiar with the case told Noticias Telemundo that “13 years ago, the department followed its internal protocols to manage sensitive international investigations.”
“As a result, the investigative activity was time-limited, restricted in scope to only drug-related criminal activity observed in the country, and (the investigation) was concluded,” the source said.
The pact with drug traffickers, according to an informant
Lawyer López Nájera, according to documents cited by ProPublica, revealed to the DEA that the Beltrán Leyva Cartel had a mole in the embassy who was an employee of the United States Marshals Service with broad access to intelligence information about criminals. Mexicans wanted by the United States.
The man was arrested, charged with federal drug trafficking crimes and ended up cooperating, according to US authorities cited in the investigation.
López Nájera also said that, in January 2006,
La Barbie
called him to meet at a hotel in Nuevo Vallarta, on the Pacific coast.
According to ProPublica's investigation, the meeting was organized by Francisco León García, who was launching his candidacy for the Mexican Senate as a representative of López Obrador's leftist alliance and was a friend of one of
La Barbie
's lieutenants , Sergio Villarreal Barragán, alias
El Grande
, who later was a key witness in the trial against García Luna, the former Mexican Secretary of Security.
León García was not elected and in 2007 he disappeared along with two other people, according to a report from the Observatory on Disappearance and Impunity in Mexico.
López Nájera told the DEA that both León and another unidentified businessman said during the meeting that
they were there with the knowledge and support of López Obrador
.
What the drug trafficker proposed was that, in exchange for an injection of cash, the campaign promised that a future López Obrador government would select law enforcement officials who would collaborate with traffickers.
Smugglers were even allegedly told they could help elect top law enforcement officials in some key border cities.
Members of organized crime insisted that, if López Obrador won the election, he would not appoint an attorney general who was hostile to his interests.
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According to the DEA information cited in the report, Mauricio Soto Caballero, who at that time worked in López Obrador's campaign, and Nicolás Mollinedo, who at that time was the political leader's driver, along with other collaborators received approximately two million dollars in cash that were delivered in three parts.
Drug traffickers, furious when López Obrador lost the elections
According to statements by López Nájera,
La Barbie
became enraged by López Obrador's defeat and improvised a plan that sought to kidnap the president of the electoral court in order to force him to revoke Felipe Calderón's victory.
A convoy of gunmen was sent to storm the court, and they only turned back when they discovered that there were army troops guarding the area, according to the report.
Soto Caballero also ended up collaborating with US justice, after pleading guilty to a charge of drug trafficking conspiracy.
During several interviews with prosecutors from the Southern District, Soto Caballero confirmed that he had received two deliveries of money from López Nájera for the 2006 campaign and that
La Barbie
had sent a third remittance, according to the report.
The report claims that some US officials considered that the evidence was not strong enough to justify the risks of an extensive covert operation in Mexico.
But in late 2011, DEA agents proposed an operation in which they would offer $5 million in alleged drug money to operatives working on López Obrador's second presidential campaign.
The agents' plan was to confirm the evidence they had accumulated about the traffickers' donations in 2006 and try to recreate that scheme in López Obrador's nascent campaign for the 2012 elections, this time with the recorders running.
They called the investigation
Operation Polanco
.
However, amid the scandal over the so-called
Fast and Furious
operation , and fear that something would go wrong in the new operation in Mexico, Justice Department officials closed the investigation, according to Golden's article.
“No one was trying to influence the election,” an official familiar with the investigation told Golden.
“But there was always the fear that López Obrador might back down in the fight against drugs — that, if this guy becomes president, he could stop us.”
During an interview with ProPublica, Mollinedo denied ever accepting donations from drug traffickers and rejected the idea that López Obrador would ever tolerate such corruption.
“We didn't handle money,” he said in the report.
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Mike Vigil, former head of international operations for the DEA, told Noticias Telemundo that investigations in foreign countries are sometimes suspended for various reasons, such as the death of an informant or the lack of new leads.
At that time, the information collected is saved until, for example, other informants provide new data that allows the investigations to be reactivated.
“If [the investigations] are going to have a political impact like this case in Mexico, they have to be reviewed.
There is a committee that looks at these sensitive issues that can cause political problems for the United States.
And if they see that there is not enough evidence and that it is possibly going to cause more harm than benefit, then they stop those investigations,” Vigil explained.
The fight against drug trafficking under the presidency of López Obrador
The ProPublica investigation highlights that, since taking office in December 2018, López Obrador has led a major setback in the fight against drugs and cites the president's security approach with the slogan “Hugs, not bullets,” and that focuses on social programs to attack the sources of crime, rather than confronting criminals.
However, Golden asserted in the report that due to this policy, police and military forces generally avoid confrontation with the largest drug trafficking gangs, which has caused the cartels to extend their influence throughout Mexican territory.
The ProPublica reporter noted that, according to some estimates, criminal gangs dominate more than a quarter of the national territory where they operate openly, impose their will on local governments and often force state and federal authorities to keep their distance. .
“Violence has hovered around historic levels, while extortion plots and other criminal businesses of drug trafficking gangs have metastasized into every layer of the economy,” he stated in the report.
“You have to be very careful with all these statements and stories that are not based on confirmed investigations, sometimes they are just confessed criminals who are testifying to reduce the sentence but there is no other type of conclusive evidence such as graphic material, audios, etc.” , researcher Correa-Cabrera told Noticias Telemundo.
“In the end, those who win from this are the US political campaigns and the pressure that the US Government can exert on Mexico,” he added.
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In this regard, Golden affirms that Soto Caballero made covert recordings of Nicolás Mollinedo as part of the DEA operation in Mexico, but he did not listen to them; rather, there are detailed transcripts that were "thoroughly reviewed by federal prosecutors in New York by officials of the Department of Justice and obviously, for the investigators."
"There is very specific information in the article. I don't think there has been a single complaint so far that there is an error, that there is information that is not true. Obviously, these are eyewitness accounts, and it is not taken as fact that the events happened in this way, but that they are the testimonies of several informants and there were important coincidences in many of the details," he explained about the testimonies he cites in the report.
The investigation affirms that this approach of the Mexican Government drives the problem of illegal drug smuggling into the United States, which, in 2022 alone, recorded 109,000 overdose deaths.
Reporter Golden also said in the report that the López Obrador Administration ignores “requests from the United States for the capture and extradition of important drug traffickers,” although Washington officials describe the relationship between both countries in positive terms.
"There have always been doubts about López Obrador's policy regarding organized crime, because there is a significant retreat in terms of cooperation with the United States and also in terms of non-confrontation with the large organized crime gangs," Golden explained in the interview and adds that there are doubts about the motivations that have given rise to this approach implemented by the Mexican security forces.
"There are doubts about what motivated this, if it was simply a policy originated by a vision that López Obrador clearly has that the war on crime has led to more deaths in Mexico and has not changed the panorama or if there may also be other interests. in the middle. I don't think there is clear evidence on one side or the other, but obviously these data provide an answer for a greater understanding of this matter," said the reporter.
__________________________________________________________________________________________
Correspondent Lourdes Hurtado collaborated with this report from Miami and producer Alejandra Arteaga from Mexico City.