Mica for cartelinsider.com
Several investigations referring to an alleged funding by the Sinaloa Cartel to the campaign of then-presidential candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) were published on January 30th. One of them is from the organization ProPublica, another from Insight Crime, and another from journalist Anabel Hernández on DW.
Among the reports, there is a meeting in Nuevo Vallarta, Nayarit. Specifically, journalist Steven Dudley detailed that the Beltran Leyva organization, a group that maintained a close relationship with the Sinaloa Cartel, was part of an association known as “La Federación”.
La Barbie, was a prominent figure within the Beltrán Leyva organization. Originally from Laredo, Texas and a former American football player, this man started off as a marijuana seller, but eventually became one of the most influential drug traffickers and was also known as one of the men present in meetings between politicians and criminals.
The existence of said meeting is based on the statements of three people who were present and two others who knew about the events after they happened, according to reports. Among those connected to AMLO, there was a real estate businessman and Héctor Francisco Pancho León García.
On behalf of the criminal organization was a man who claimed to have planned the meeting and who was one of the witnesses in the trial against Genaro García Luna, Sergio Villarreal, El Grande, as well as La Barbie, Roberto López Nájera, and Carlos Montemayor González, the latter being the father-in-law of La Barbie.
The objective of the meeting, according to Dudley, was for the criminal organization to have some type of influence in the appointment of the then attorney general of the country. This coincides with what was recorded by journalist Anabel Hernández in her column and the mentioned meeting also appears in the publication of ProPublica.
It should be noted that during the trial against Genaro García Luna, El Grande was questioned about alleged bribes directed to López Obrador. It was lawyer César de Castro who asked the former capo: “Do you remember paying, through Gabriel Regino, 7 million for a campaign against Fox?”
“If I remember correctly, I paid him (Gabriel Regino) some money, but not for López Obrador,” said El Grande.
Regarding the other mentioned individuals, Pancho León was a candidate for the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) nomination for the mayorship of Gómez Palacio, Durango.
While in November 2022, La Barbie did not appear in the prison records of the United States. But by February 2023, this man was already under police custody. Some people pointed out that Valdez Villarreal would be one of the witnesses against García Luna, but this did not happen.
Regarding La Barbie’s father-in-law, Carlos Montemayor González, also known as The Director and/or The Lawyer, he was arrested in 2010 and more than a decade later, in 2022, a judge denied his request to review or cancel his 36-year prison sentence. He was handed over to US authorities in 2015, where he is currently imprisoned.
On the other hand, Roberto Lopez Najera was a lawyer for La Barbie and after becoming a protected witness, he was identified by the code name Jennifer. In order to avoid being imprisoned, he spoke about cash donations from criminals and even claimed to have covertly recorded conversations with Nicolas Mollinedo Bastar, a man close to current Mexican president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.
Thanks for reading!
Mica
Email: mica@cartelinsider.com
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