Mexico: Ex-drug czar accused of corruption

The Mexican government’s attempt to curb rampant violence has led it to look into the widespread corruption of former senior law enforcement officials. The latest case involves the country’s former drug czar who has been accused of accepting $450,000 worth of bribes. According to the office of Mexico’s Attorney General, Noe Ramirez received the payments from drug cartels in exchange for leaking police information.

Ramirez’ arrest has even caught the attention of Interpol who suspects that their information systems in Mexico may have been compromised.

Mexican president Felipe Calderon has aggressively tried to combat his country’s deadly violence yet it has been an uphill battle. As the Council on Foreign Relations’ Stephanie Hanson wrote today:

Calderon has moved aggressively against Mexico's drug cartels. He has deployed over thirty thousand soldiers across the country, purged several police forces of corrupt members, and pushed a judicial reform package through Congress. But the violence has only mounted. More than four thousand people have died in drug-related violence this year, up from more than 2,500 deaths in 2007. The escalation is so great that drug gangs are widely suspected of causing the plane crash in early November that killed the interior minister, though the government says pilot error was the cause (NYT).

The drug cartels' infiltration of the police, judiciary, and political parties has severely compromised the government's ability to fight the drug cartels, some experts say. As Alma Guillermoprieto writes in the New Yorker, the end of one-party rule in Mexico precipitated the need to run expensive election campaigns, which the drug cartels are reported to now fund. The Mexican army is considered relatively clean, but its deployment has presented new opportunities for corruption, and causes tension with local security forces.

Image- ABC News (“Federal police officers guard a house after a shooting in Tijuana, Mexico, Saturday, Oct. 25, 2008.”)
Sources- The Latin Americanist, BBC News, AP, CNN, Council on Foreign Relations, New York Times, New Yorker