2024 was a stark reminder that drug trafficking money can reach the highest levels of politics. From Honduras to Mexico to Colombia, alleged contributions to narcopolitics have shaken power bases and disrupted international relations.
This article is part of the 2024 Crime Game Changers series. Read other articles in the series here.
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Honduras #NarcoVideo
Perhaps the clearest evidence of this is Honduras, where President Xiomara Castro has been put on the defensive due to his first family’s interactions with drug-trafficking families, and the US-Honduras relationship, including the possible extradition of drug-trafficking suspects to the US. Counter-drug cooperation has almost come to an end.
Much of the tension arose on September 3, when Insight Crime reported that Carlos Zelaya, Castro’s brother-in-law and a prominent congressman at the time, attended a meeting with top drug traffickers in the country in the final days of Castro’s fall from power. This can be traced back to the release of a video showing the incident in progress. Mr. Zelaya did not deny that he was there, nor did he claim that the video was fake. Instead, two days before its release and after Insight Crime reached out for comment on the incident, he sought to downplay the significance of the rally, saying he only knew one person who attended.
“Money was never given to me, at least not to me,” he added.
Mr. Zelaya said he was willing to consult with U.S. authorities, but he has since reportedly resigned from his parliamentary seat and fled to neighboring Nicaragua, potentially putting him beyond the reach of U.S. prosecutors. There is. (Zelaya denied these accounts.)
The Zelaya family’s alleged ties to drug traffickers go back decades. At their center sits Manuel “Mel” Zelaya, Carlos’ younger brother, former president and current top aide to wife Xiomara Castro. In a 2008 diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks, then-U.S. Ambassador to Honduras Charles Ford said Mel Zelaya had “close ties to individuals believed to be involved in transnational organized crime.” I wrote it.
And in a 2013 video released by Insight Crimes, drug traffickers (all of whom have since been convicted in the United States for their crimes) were seen either during the 2005 election campaign or while he was in power. He recalled his contributions to Mel Celaya between 2006 and 2006. And that was before his right-wing political opponents collaborated with military officials to orchestrate an administrative coup in 2009 that removed him from office. In response to Insight Crime’s request for comment, Mel Zelaya, like his brother Carlos, said he has “never accepted money from drug traffickers.”
SEE ALSO: Honduras doubles down on flawed Mano Dura strategy
Honduran authorities have also long suspected the family’s interactions with traffickers. In 2010, Honduran prosecutors opened a money laundering investigation against several members of the Zelaya family, including Mel Zelaya and Carlos Zelaya, a Contra Corriente investigation revealed in September.
Based on internal documents from the Honduras Attorney General’s Office obtained exclusively by Insight Crime, the Contracorriente investigation is based on a series of land purchases by the Zelaya family and Grupo Fleur SA, as well as real estate firm Grupo Fleur SA, which authorities believed This was linked to a series of land purchases by SA. Money laundering scheme.
One of Fluir’s co-founders is the wife of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán and Sergio Neftali Mejía, a drug trafficking partner in the Sinaloa cartel, who was later convicted of drug trafficking and served time in a U.S. federal prison. was sentenced to life imprisonment. Government investigators also documented that Fluor suspiciously issued debit cards to numerous members of the Celaya family. And with the cooperation of Colombian authorities, Honduran prosecutors investigated whether Carlos and Mel’s other brother, Marco Zelaya, had stopped cocaine shipments from Colombia in the days following the coup against Mel.
Despite the subsequent indictment of Mejia in the United States and the arrest of one of Fluir’s founders, the Fluir case came to nothing. The founder was released, and Zelaya has not been charged in the case.
Still, the fear of U.S. prosecutors looms. Days before Insight Crime released the video, President Castro suddenly announced he would move to halt extradition from Honduras. And after the video was released, Castro reacted furiously to the revelation. In both cases, she blamed the US government.
#NarcoPresidente in Mexico
In January, the U.S. government filed a new became the center of major revelations.
AMLO, as the better known, lost that election but was elected in 2018 and spent much of the month in his daily presidential press conference slamming the investigation after Insight Crime magazine published an article. did. For AMLO, that chronicle, published on the same day by ProPublica and Deutsche Welle, was part of a DEA plot to overthrow the regime. Meanwhile, his critics lashed out and the hashtag #narcopresidente spread like wildfire on social media platform X.
The DEA investigation was flawed. The incident began with testimony from a lawyer who worked with the Beltrán Leyva Organization (BLO). This lawyer later became known for his erratic and false testimony against other officials. Still, for the Drug Enforcement Administration, the lawyer has proven reliable in several high-profile cases, and the investigators leading the case have moved forward with the plan and received corroborating testimony from at least three other participants in the plan. was secured.
One of these participants was AMLO’s campaign aide, but the DEA intercepted him along the U.S.-Mexico border and turned him away to ensure his cooperation. The aide told investigators how money was passed from BLO operatives to the AMLO camp in early 2006. Afterwards, a wire was connected to a meeting with an AMLO campaign official who the aide claimed had received the money.
By then, AMLO was ramping up his bid to run for president again in 2012. But this wire gave us little to gain and caused more problems. With the statute of limitations on the case running out, U.S. law enforcement officials devised an elaborate plan to put AMLO campaign officials at risk. But a special committee of the U.S. Department of Justice intervened and halted the investigation because it could appear to be an attempt to overturn AMLO’s 2012 campaign.
The very existence of the committee speaks for itself. Prosecuting high-level officials from other countries is difficult for the U.S. government, its drug enforcement officials, and defense attorneys to thread the needle. And in many cases, the U.S. government chooses to avoid pursuing these types of investigations because they can upend diplomatic relations for years, even decades. The stakes are also high on a personal level for investigators and prosecutors. These cases can make or break their career.
One recent notable exception to the more cautious approach culminated in June 2024 when a federal judge sentenced former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández to 45 years in prison. In a dramatic trial in February, the court ruled that Mr. Hernández was involved in a long-running drug-trafficking conspiracy while he was president from 2013 to 2021, even though the United States had hailed him as an ally fighting crime. It turned out that he was complicit in. He was indicted for the first time after his term ended. Ironically, it was President Castro who gave the green light for his arrest and extradition.
See also: Special Series: The Rise and Fall of Honduras Former President Juan Orlando Hernández
When it comes to Mexico, U.S. officials remain far more calculating and politically cautious. In October, the United States sentenced Genaro García Luna, a former security official who was convicted in 2023 of cartel bribery, to 38 years in prison. García Luna led the police force for then-President Felipe Calderón, an avowed rival of AMLO. In contrast, the United States in 2020 released former Defense Minister Salvador Cienfuegos, who was arrested at Los Angeles International Airport and charged with accepting bribes from another cartel.
The DEA was outraged by Cienfuegos’ decision. Meanwhile, AMLO gloated and then released classified communications to further embarrass the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency and undermine the agency’s case against the general. The case was made even more damning given the agency’s previous investigation into AMLO. After the task force closed the case in early 2012, the Drug Enforcement Administration agent assigned to the case became furious and asked his superiors: “What if AMLO wins and we know about him?”
#PetroEscándalo in Colombia
Allegations of drug donations have also had a negative impact on other presidential positions. In August 2023, Nicolas Petro, the son of Colombian President Gustavo Petro, was targeted by dozens of convicted drug traffickers and at least other highly questionable businessmen for his father’s 2022 presidential campaign. He told prosecutors that he had received $10,000 in donations. .
The trafficker was Samuel Santander Lopesiera. Lopesiera was known in the underworld as “Hombre Marlboro” (Marlboro Man). As his name suggests, he specialized in selling contraband, especially cigarettes. He was convicted of drug trafficking in the United States, served 18 years of a 25-year sentence, and was released in 2021.
Nicholas said in a statement to authorities that his father was aware of the donations, adding that most of the donations went to personal expenses rather than campaigning.
In response to the scandal, President Petro noted that Nicholas grew up in a separate household from his father, saying, “I didn’t raise him.”
However, in 2024, the investigation took a turn for the worse. In March, Mr. Nicholas testified before a Congressional committee that he had been pressured by prosecutors. That the money was lent to him, not donated to the campaign. And his father did not know about these debts. Later, as the defense rushed to negotiate a plea deal on money laundering charges, he switched defense teams. As of this writing, this lawsuit is still pending.
Meanwhile, rebels are using the scandal (referred to as X as #PetroEscandalo) to attack the president’s domestic and foreign policies, and the president’s efforts to carry out far-reaching initiatives that Petro calls “total peace.” It may have weakened the ability of Encircling various criminal groups operating in Colombia.
The US State Department also mentioned the scandal in April in its annual World Report on Human Rights, straining bilateral relations between the two countries. It must have felt like déjà vu for the United States. The United States revoked the visa of then-Colombian President Ernesto Samper in 1995 after his 1994 campaign received more than $6 million from the Cali cartel. Mr. Samper remained in power, but like Mr. Petro, he was hobbled, at least in part, by the accusations.
*An earlier version of this article claimed that Carlos Zelaya had definitely fled to Nicaragua. Government officials strongly denied this explanation.
