Judge accused over Andrew Clark release
Original reporting: El Financiero
What happened
U.S. prosecutors accuse Luis Benítez Alcántara of accepting a $2 million bribe to release Andrew Clark. El Financiero also reviews his earlier Mexican court rulings.
Reporting and context
Mexican federal judge Luis Benítez Alcántara has been arrested in Colombia on U.S. charges alleging that he accepted a $2 million bribe to secure Andrew Clark’s release from Mexican custody. The Justice Department says the United States will seek his extradition. Clark is described by U.S. prosecutors as a senior associate of Ryan Wedding in an alleged international cocaine-trafficking organization.
The alleged payment concerned Clark’s release, rather than Wedding’s. Prosecutors say Benítez granted Clark bond and ordered his release on February 24, 2025. Clark was subsequently arrested again and taken to the United States. Benítez faces nine accessory-after-the-fact counts in the U.S. indictment.
El Financiero’s account also revisits the judge’s work in Mexico. It reports that he acquitted Juan Carlos García Rivera in the Pegasus espionage case in January 2024, finding that prosecutors had not met the required evidentiary standard, and that another court upheld that decision. That judicial ruling is distinct from the new U.S. criminal allegations.
Sources: El Financiero and the Justice Department release and linked indictment. The original article contains conflicting wording about the alleged bribe and a tax-warrant reference; this reader follows the primary charging record for the bribe and does not allege tax fraud by the judge.