Free Republic

MEXICO CITY -- The reported discovery in cartel hands of a sheaf of police documents containing agents' names and contact numbers, along with apparent references to shared U.S. intelligence data, has renewed fears of high-level corruption in Mexico's war on drugs. The trove of papers - which also included an apparent drug cartel payroll listing police commanders - was found in the car of an associate of Mexico's most powerful drug lord, oaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, during a May 2009 bust, the newspaper Reforma said Monday. The papers appeared to be internal documents, possibly memos or registers, from Mexico's federal...

MEXICO CITY — Mexico's drug corruption scandals reached into the presidential guard as authorities identified an officer who served in the unit as a possible spy for the country's violent drug cartels. An official of the federal prosecutor's office who was not authorized to be quoted by name identified Arturo Gonzalez Rodriguez on Saturday as an army major who was assigned to a unit of the presidential guard. Prosecutors announced Friday that Gonzalez Rodriguez had been placed under house arrest for 40 days while he is investigated. The prosecution official said there are allegations that the officer passed information to...

MEXICO CITY - A senior Mexico City police commander who oversaw raids in the capital's gang-filled Tepito neighborhood was slain in a drive-by shooting outside his home, officials said Tuesday. Victor Hugo Moneda, who led the city's investigative police, was killed as he was getting out of his car Monday night, the Mexico City prosecutor's office said in a statement. Prosecutor Miguel Angel Mancera said the killing may have been a reprisal by criminals. No arrests have been made. "We believe that it could have been some type of reaction against the actions that are being carried out by police,"...

MEXICO CITY — Interpol is sending a special investigative team to Mexico to determine whether sensitive information from its database on criminals and terrorists was leaked to drug cartels, the agency said Wednesday. Interpol launched the probe after Mexican federal police official Ricardo Gutierrez Vargas was placed under house arrest as part of an investigation of law enforcement officers who allegedly shared police information with traffickers. Gutierrez Vargas directed the international police agency's National Central Bureau in Mexico, where he had access to Interpol's database of information on suspected terrorists, wanted persons, fingerprints and DNA profiles, among other data, the...