The Northeast Cartel Uses Horse Racing to Launder Illicit Profits

The U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) imposed sanctions on Mexican individuals and companies linked to the Northeast Cartel. Racehorses and the use of public resources for electoral purposes are in the crosshairs.

These are the Quarter Horses from the Sandiván stable. And this is the La Molienda Club, a racetrack controlled by the Northeast Cartel. The U.S. Treasury Department announced on Tuesday that the criminal group used horse racing to launder illicit proceeds and finance its operations. 

The document cites the Sandiván stable—which the Treasury attributes to Gamaliel Garza García and links to the La Molienda Club—and identifies Pablo César Guajardo Álvarez, alias “El Taquia” (a regional cartel boss in Nuevo Laredo), as the person in charge. According to consulted racing records, the stable has at least seven registered horses with race wins, including at the Hipódromo de las Américas and with extensive participation in Texas racing circuits.

The stable is located in Anáhuac, Nuevo León—the same municipality where a construction company flagged by OFAC, Construcciones y Edificaciones Garza Elías (Ceguesa), operates; this company received multi-million-peso public contracts in the border region. 

Between July 2022 and April 2025, the government of Nuevo León, the municipality of Anáhuac (in the same state), and the city government of Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, reportedly signed contracts totaling over 134 million pesos with Ceguesa and other companies—also sanctioned by OFAC—as part of Gamaliel Garza’s network. 

In Nuevo León, Codefront—the agency managing the International Trade Facilitation Center at Puerto Colombia, Anáhuac—paid Ceguesa 110 million pesos to modernize Nuevo León’s main commercial crossing into Texas. Anáhuac, governed by PRI member Juan Manuel Mortón, signed three public works contracts worth over 15 million pesos with the same company. 

Meanwhile, in Nuevo Laredo, Morena mayor Carmen Lilia Canturosas awarded a contract worth 9 million pesos to *Concretos y Productos Asfálticos del Norte* last year for public works. A diagram of the financial network identifies seven additional companies controlled by the Garza family; a separate section lists *Tamex Logistics*—based in Nuevo Laredo—as a facilitator of drug shipments, alongside Francisco Javier Inzunza Partida, identified as the company’s dispatcher. 

However, the most serious allegation points directly to electoral interference. According to the OFAC, the construction firm served as a front to funnel resources from the Northeast Cartel into the campaigns of the group’s preferred candidates; Gamaliel Garza Elías—the network leader’s son—is identified as the person responsible for managing the company’s daily operations and delivering cash to finance political campaigns. 

The *modus operandi* involved securing government contracts, subcontracting the work to individuals affiliated with the Northeast Cartel, and recycling the cash flow to fund local candidates, though the specific beneficiaries of the Garza group’s largesse were not disclosed.

Source: Milenio