Mexico has begun to scrutinize financial institutions sanctioned by the United States government for allegedly laundering drug trafficking proceeds. The Mexican Attorney General’s Office (FGR) has launched an investigation into multimillion-dollar transfers paid to Vector by Prestadora de Servicios Murata, S.A. de C.V., a front company that heads a money laundering network serving the Sinaloa Cartel. The firm, which has already been disqualified by the Ministry of Finance, deposited 97.6 million pesos (US$5.2 million) with Vector through 53 transfers made in 2017. The FGR, headed by Alejandro Gertz, has forwarded the case to the Specialized Prosecutor’s Office for Organized Crime (FEMDO). This newspaper has contacted a Vector spokesperson for comment on the new investigation by the Attorney General’s Office; the spokesperson stated that the brokerage firm will not comment.
Last week, the US Treasury Department accused CI Banco, Intercam, and Vector of playing “a key and prolonged role” in laundering millions of dollars for Mexican drug cartels and of acting as a payment vehicle for the acquisition of fentanyl precursors from China. The US government documented that Vector allegedly provided services to the Sinaloa Cartel and the Gulf Cartel. According to these investigations, between 2013 and 2021, an employee of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán’s cartel laundered two million dollars through shipments from the US to Mexico through Vector. The brokerage firm also helped the cartel manage payments for fentanyl precursors, according to the indictment. El Chapo’s organization is the main producer of the synthetic drug that has flooded the US market, where overdose deaths number in the thousands each year.
Vector is a stockbrokerage firm in which Alfonso Romo, who served as a business advisor to former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador between 2018 and 2020, is a shareholder. According to the Treasury Department, the brokerage firm manages $11 billion in assets. Following the bombshell, Claudia Sheinbaum’s administration has demanded that its US counterparts provide evidence of accusations of drug money laundering by financial institutions. Last week, a civil organization filed a complaint with the Attorney General’s Office against Vector and Murata for alleged organized crime, tax evasion, and money laundering, and provided evidence of dozens of invoices confirming transactions between the company and the brokerage firm. The transfers took place between January and July 2017. During that period, some deposits were small enough to raise little suspicion, such as one for 187 pesos, and others for enormous amounts, such as one for 19.9 million pesos. In a single day, May 12, 2017, Murata made eight transfers to Vector totaling 27 million pesos.
In 2021, the Tax Administration Service (SAT) classified Murata as a definitive shell company, which pretended to be a firm dedicated to the military industry. In other words, for the tax authority, it was a shell company that simulated operations and issued invoices for the purpose of laundering funds. Behind Murata is a family identified by the Prosecutor’s Office as the financial operator of the Sinaloa Cartel. The company was established in 2014 by the son of Nino Ferrari Gleason, manager of Manuel Rodolfo Trillo Hernández, La Trilladora, who was also a financial operator for El Chapo’s cartel. Murata connects with other invoicing companies with which it shares front men and transfers funds, a typical money laundering practice.
The Attorney General’s Office (FGR) and the UIF, the government’s anti-money laundering agency, state that La Trilladora, arrested in 2015, laundered more than 6 billion pesos for the Sinaloa Cartel by posing as a successful businessman. The Attorney General’s Office also accuses him of financing the construction of the tunnel through which El Chapo Guzmán escaped from the Altiplano prison in the State of Mexico in 2015, the kingpin’s second escape from a Mexican prison. While in prison, La Trilladora laundered at least 901 million pesos thanks to Ferrari. An FGR investigation, reported by Reforma last year, indicates that Ferrari used Sanborns waitresses and his own daughter as fronts to establish La Trilladora’s shell companies. According to that newspaper, Ferrari was arrested in July 2024, accused of money laundering and organized crime. Meanwhile, La Trilladora was sentenced in February of this year to a minimum prison sentence, after the judge dismissed the main charges brought by the Prosecutor’s Office against it.
In addition to the Sinaloa Cartel, Murata’s main clients include PRI-led institutions and governments, which over the years paid him more than 301 million pesos in contracts, according to tax documentation accessed by this newspaper. The state of Nuevo León was his gold mine. Of the total amount paid to him by PRI institutions, at least 279 million pesos—92% of the total—came from contracts in that state. Several of the contracts were signed directly by Paolo Ferrari, the son of the La Trilladora operator who founded the company. Although he claimed to be involved in the military sector, many of the businesses that government institutions contracted him with were radically different. For example, the mayor’s office of Monterrey, the capital of Nuevo León, commissioned Murata to teach workshops on traffic accidents, alcoholism, and sexuality in exchange for a payment of 10 million pesos. At the time, the mayor of Monterrey was PRI member Adrián de la Garza, who returned to office after the 2024 election.
Murata is linked to other companies that diverted millions of dollars in resources in Chiapas during the administration of Manuel Velasco (of the PVEM, a PRI ally for years and now of Morena); she is also connected to two individuals involved in illicit businesses: Eduardo Felipe Moisés Salomón and Salvador Campillo Talavera. The former participated in the electoral fraud involving Monex cards in the 2012 presidential elections, in which PRI member Enrique Peña Nieto was elected. The latter collaborated in the pyramid ad-broker scheme that deceived more than 5,000 investors, most of them Spanish. Murata’s crimes had already been reported locally in Nuevo León. Now, pressure from the United States has provided the perfect platform to target this powerful money-laundering criminal network in the federal justice system.
Source: elpais
