cannabisnews.com: The Corrupting Allure of Dirty Drug Money!





The Corrupting Allure of Dirty Drug Money!
Posted by FoM on February 27, 1999 at 16:37:17 PT
Are Mexico's cartels buying U.S. cops?
NOGALES, ARIZ.–In the dusty towns along the border here, some of the new math just doesn't add up. Take Rafael Landa, for instance. Until last month, the inspector for the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service was pulling down about $35,000 a year. But after police raided his modest pink house here and arrested him, they found some $300,000 in cash.
 Authorities believe that smugglers for two Mexican drug gangs paid Landa and two other INS inspectors close to $800,000 in return for their allowing some 20 tons of cocaine to slip across the border. All three men have pleaded not guilty to charges arising from the investigation, which the FBI dubbed "Operation Ghost Boat."But such tales abound along the border here, as Mexican crime syndicates have come to dominate the drug business. Two thirds of the cocaine headed to the United States now crosses the Southwest border, making this a land of opportunity for government agents willing to look the other way. Late last week President Clinton certified that Mexico's government is cooperating with U.S. efforts. But Drug Enforcement Administration chief Thomas Constantine told a different story in congressional testimony. Constantine said Mexican cartels operate with impunity by corrupting many of that country's police agencies "on a systemic basis" with $1 million weekly in bribes. Now there's worry that the same tactics are succeeding on this side. Following the Nogales arrests, Tucson FBI chief Steve McCraw said border corruption was so "pervasive . . . it's a national disgrace." Getting a fix on the real extent of corruption isn't easy. Investigators say most cops are honest, but the trend lines aren't good. Between 1991 and 1996, a special FBI initiative along the border resulted in the convictions of 22 law enforcement officials accused of smuggling-related offenses. In the past two years alone, there have been 28 more convictions. And these figures do not include scores of local officers convicted along the border in other probes.$10,000 a pop. For drug smugglers, the bribes are chump change. The 20 tons of cocaine allegedly waved through Nogales by the three INS inspectors had a street value of $1.6 billion, so paying less than $1 million to move it was a bargain. And the money buys more than just a blind eye. Corrupt cops and agents can wave through loads at preappointed times, drive the drugs through inspection points themselves, or provide cartels with sensitive intelligence. Investigators believe that in many recent corruption cases, border cops have been recruited by friends of family members, and often the inspectors are in debt. An immigration inspector in El Paso, Texas–who had hefty credit-card debt and was on the verge of bankruptcy–used a cell phone and beeper to inform a smuggler when and where he would be working, waving through 10 shipments of marijuana at $10,000 a load.What's doubly troubling are reports showing that U.S. agencies aren't doing all they can to stop the crooked cops. A Treasury Department report said last month that the U.S. Customs Service had failed to fight corruption effectively, in part because of a "long history of strife and infighting" involving two of its investigative units. Customs Commissioner Raymond Kelly promises a shake-up.A draft of a U.S. General Accounting Office report says that both INS and Customs have "missed opportunities to learn lessons and change their policies" to prevent corruption, in part by not analyzing closed criminal case files. The report says the two agencies failed to follow their own anticorruption policies, and reinvestigations of employees–required every five years–"were typically overdue, in some instances, by as many as three years." A copy of the report was obtained by U.S. News. "Traffickers are richer than ever," says Sen. Charles Grassley, the Iowa Republican who requested the GAO report. "And they are looking for the weak spots." More and more, it appears, the smugglers are finding them.http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/990308/8bord.htm
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