US Embassy agent sold information to drug lords
An Interpol agent working in the US Embassy in Mexico City and at the international airport used his position to supply information on the Drug Enforcement Agency to the Beltrán-Leyva cartel.
Details emerged after the spy, codenamed Felipe, confessed to US authorities.
It came as prosecutors also admitted that two staff in the Mexican Attorney-General’s Office for Organised Crime - a government unit that fights the drug mafia – had been found to have been in the pay of the cartel for four years.
They received between $150,000 (£97,000) and $450,000 (£288,000) a month from the cartel for information on surveillance targets and potential raids.
It is regarded as the worst known case of law enforcement in Mexico being compromised by drug barons since the arrest in 1997 of General Jesús Gutiérrez Rebollo, head of the country’s anti-drug agency.
“This doesn’t say much for US security – it’s as embarrassing as hell for this to come out and I suspect heads will roll within the DEA [Drug Enforcement Administration],” said Bruce Bagley, an expert in Latin American drug trafficking, from the University of Miami in Florida.
The scandal came less than a week after Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State, visited Mexico City to discuss the $400million Mérida Initiative, aimed at helping Mexican and Central American law enforcement agencies to fight organised drug crime.