Former FBI deputy director says Mexican government is complicit with drug cartels

Chris Swecker, former deputy director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), said on July 26 that “the Mexican government is complicit with the drug cartels.”

One day after the surprise arrest or surrender of Ismael El Mayo Zambada and Joaquín Guzmán López, both leaders of the Sinaloa Cartel, at a private airport in Santa Teresa, New Mexico, very close to El Paso, Texas, in the United States, the former senior FBI official declared in an interview with NewsNation that the Mexican authorities are complicit with the drug cartels.

“Anyone who has pursued drug-related crimes for as long as I did on the border and in Miami, when all the action was happening in South Florida, knows that the reason all the activity went to Mexico is because you can corrupt the Mexican government and establish trafficking routes without anyone bothering you,” explained the special agent.

The former deputy director of the FBI Criminal Investigation Division said that the way drug cartels operate is by buying “the federal government, the mayors, police officers, public servants and even those who are very high up,” adding that “the question is not whether the government is helping them, they are part of the cartels.”

Regarding the capture or surrender of the co-founder of the Sinaloa Cartel and the son of El Chapo Guzmán Loera, he warned that things will get violent within criminal organizations.

“Typically when you make arrests like these, high-level ones, one of the big leaders of the Sinaloa Cartel, El Chapo’s organization, things tend to get violent, even more so, and violence is the norm in Mexico. When you take out cartel leaders, other leaders start buying power, rivals start moving and things start to get extremely bloody,” he said.

One of the versions circulating in the media about the arrest of the leaders of the Pacific Cartel is that the FBI and the US Department of Homeland Security were working for one to three years to get Joaquín Guzmán López to turn himself in to the North American authorities.

According to these versions, the undercover agents had lost hope that this capture would happen, when on Thursday, July 25, they received a message from Guzmán López, brother of Ovidio, El Ratón, saying that he was traveling to the United States with someone else, El Mayo Zambada.

It is still unclear how this arrest occurred; it is not known whether it was an operation by the US investigative agencies, whether it was a delivery or a kidnapping of Joaquín Guzmán López from his godfather and godfather of his father El Mayo Zambada.

On the same day that the former deputy director of the FBI made the statements described above, the Mexican government assured that it “did not participate” in the US operation to arrest the two leaders of the Sinaloa Cartel.

“The Mexican government did not participate in this arrest or delivery, this is not the case, and we will continue to collaborate with the United States government, as we have done until this occasion,” declared the Secretary of Security and Citizen Protection (SSPC), Rosa Icela Rodríguez, in the morning press conference from the National Palace.

After the first hearings before the North American authorities, El Mayo Zambada and Joaquín Guzmán López pleaded not guilty to all charges against them for drug trafficking.

In the Northern District Court of Illinois, the son of Joaquín El Chapo Guzmán and member of Los Chapitos, appeared before Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman where he heard each of the charges that the US government maintains against him, but the drug trafficker pleaded not guilty.

Jeffrey Lichtman, the lawyer for El Chapo’s son, stated that his client is not accused of kidnapping: “He is not being accused of kidnapping. Take him as someone who knows, not as someone who thinks he knows or as an anonymous source,” he said.

Meanwhile, Zambada García also pleaded not guilty on July 26, but in the Western District Court of Texas.

There, Frank Pérez, El Mayo’s lawyer, revealed to the Los Angeles Times that his client was forced to travel to the United States: “I have no comments to make, except to point out that he did not surrender voluntarily. He was handed over against his will,” he declared.

Guzmán López was summoned to court on September 30, 2024, while El Mayo will appear again in the Western District Court of Texas on July 31.

Source: infobae