Posted on 07/15/2006 6:22:28 AM PDT by radar101
The head of a group of companies and people that officials say laundered thousands of dollars in drug proceeds for the Arellano-Félix cartel owned a condominium here in a complex called Camelot.
K.C. ALFRED / Union-Tribune Federal authorities yesterday served the owners of this house with papers ordering them not to sell because they have been suspected of links to drug-cartel money laundering. Yesterday, as children played in a nearby pool, federal agents taped a notice to the unit's front door, advising anyone who reads it that the owner, Tijuana businessman Lorenzo Arce Flores, is linked to drug traffickers. As a result of that designation, the notice said, all of Arce's property in the United States was “blocked” and could not be “transferred, withdrawn, exported, paid or otherwise dealt in” without authorization from the government.
Wednesday, after he was first named as one of the cartel's chief money launderers, Arce denied any connection to drug traffickers.
In Mexico yesterday, a police officer named on the list was placed on leave while federal authorities announced that they would open their own investigations into the people and businesses.
Also, some of the people named by federal officials complained they were being treated unfairly because of previous business ties with Arce. U.S. authorities have said people may end up on the list if they are suspected of money laundering, or if they are tied to suspected money launderers through property holdings.
The list is part of the U.S. government's efforts to go after drug traffickers and terrorists, and placement on it is not always accompanied by criminal charges.
Agents with the Treasury Department, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the Drug Enforcement Administration also visited a new home in Chula Vista's Eastlake neighborhood owned by Arce's son, Roberto Arce Piña, and his wife.
Roberto Arce wasn't home, but agents gave his wife, Liza Hoffman, a copy of the notice telling her about the list and that the house couldn't be sold.
“Everyone was so surprised,” Hoffman said later, after the agents left. “We don't have any association with the people they said we had, never. . . . We live a normal life.”
Property records indicate she and her husband bought the lot on which the house was built for $657,000 in December 2003.
While distressed by the allegation linking her husband to money laundering for drug traffickers, she was unsure what impact the listing would have.
“I don't have any plans to sell,” she said.
In probing whether to put someone on the list, investigators use informants, tips from bank officials and information from a computer program that sifts through banking records in a vast international database.
People or companies on the list assembled by the U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control cannot do business with U.S. companies or business. Their property in the United States is essentially frozen.
One of the people on the list, Carlos Torres Ramírez, was an accident investigations supervisor with Tijuana's municipal police force. Speaking at a news conference in Tijuana yesterday, he said he was voluntarily resigning while the department investigates him.
Torres said he used to own a company that provided security services. He said his company was contracted by two companies on the Treasury list for several years. Those two companies were represented by Arce, according to a document Torres presented.
Torres said he wonders if that connection put him on the list. Torres said he never formed a business with Arce and he closed his own security business about four years ago to return to police work.
“I haven't done anything illicit here, and that's why I'm showing my face,” he said before a phalanx of reporters.
The list drew protests in Tijuana from other people placed on it, who question why they are being targeted if they had limited business dealings with Arce.
One of the listed people, architect Alfredo Eugenio Ocejo Miramontes, said he opened a garden for special events in 2001 with the help of Arce and Arce's daughter, Araceli Arce Piña, who is also on the list.
Ocejo said he knew Arce because he had done some design work for him. Arce and Arce's daughter, he said, had 60 percent ownership of the company, but they sold their shares to him after a year.
He said he continues to struggle to make a profit at the business, which was also on the list.
Ocejo said he has contacted an attorney to find out what he can do to clear his name.
“I haven't been able to sleep since finding out about this, and I'm very concerned this may hurt my image,” he said.
Well that's gonna F the comps...
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