⁍ Salvador Cienfuegos was arrested at Los Angeles airport on Thursday.
⁍ He was charged with four counts of drug trafficking and money laundering.
⁍ Cienfuegos served from 2012 to 2018 in the government of President Enrique Pena Nieto.
– Mexico’s former defense minister, nicknamed “The Godfather,” was arrested at Los Angeles International Airport on Thursday and charged with drug trafficking and money laundering, Reuters reports. Salvador Cienfuegos, who served in the government of President Enrique Pena Nieto from 2012 to 2018, is accused of protecting a faction of the Beltran-Leyva cartel in exchange for bribes. According to the AP, Cienfuegos is accused of protecting the H-2 Cartel, “a cartel that routinely engaged in wholesale violence, including torture and murder.” The H-2 Cartel is a remnant of the Beltran-Leyva gang. Cienfuegos is also accused of introducing the cartel’s senior leaders to other Mexican officials in exchange for bribes. He is also accused of introducing the gang’s senior leaders to other Mexican officials in exchange for bribes. Information he passed on about cooperating witnesses in a US investigation led to the murder of a cartel member wrongly believed to be assisting US law enforcement. Cienfuegos’ downfall has far reaching implications for Mexico’s anti-cartel strategy, led largely by the armed forces for more than a decade. Ahead of mid-term elections next year, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador will seek to capitalize on the capture of such a high-ranking member of his predecessor’s government. Lopez Obrador pledged to suspend anyone inside his government implicated in the charges, but needing to avoid instability. “We won’t cover up for anybody,” he said. Lopez Obrador incorporated the arrest into his narrative that his predecessors presided over a debilitating increase in corruption in Mexico.
Source: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mexico-politics/the-godfather-mexicos-ex-defense-chief-helped-ship-tons-of-cocaine-and-heroin-idUSKBN27128X