Mexican police have seized $205 million after raiding a house in an exclusive neighborhood of the capital, the attorney general’s office has said. Seven people were arrested at the house in the Lomas de Chapultepec district, where police discovered wads of US bank notes in bulging cases and stacked to the ceiling in closets on Friday.
Mexican media said the haul was four times the amount of drug-related money confiscated in Mexico during all of last year.
Police said the money belonged to a drug gang that smuggled chemicals used to make methamphetamine, a powerful stimulant.
The attorney general’s office said the gang operated behind a pharmaceuticals front company which imported tonnes of the chemical pseudoephedrine, used in making methamphetamine, from India.
Meth certainly is becoming the drug of choice – for making lots and lots of money in Mexico.
Obviously, Mexican gangsters can now afford better trucks.
http://www.dvorak.org/blog/?p=10334
How much you wanna bet that pile was 3 times that size before the arrival of los Federales?
In totally unrelated news, dozens of men in Mexican police uniforms have been sighted in Houston and Los Angeles, pricing out Lamborghinis, Ferraris and Bentleys.
non news at its finest
I have a cold right now, and I blame meth users for my inability to get good cold medicine over the counter.
Now imagine 175 times as much money, $36 Billion dollars in cash, unaccounted for and ‘spent’ by contractors in iraq.
#4, I’m with ya bro. Usually I understand the ban on pseudoephedrine, but right now I’m cursing those SOBs.
#4 – I agree completely… obviously this isnt “stemming the tide”… can we just legalize drugs and get this mess over with already?
7 – You’re missing the point. Do you have any idea how many people, from national politicians taking bribes (oops) campaign contributions to black ops agencies to bigtime bankers, and right down to prison guards and corruptos at all levels, depend on these black markets? That’s not even counting local poor folk who see the black markets as their only good path to economic comfort.
Piles of cash like the one in the picture, even before they’ve been depleted by whoever can grab a bundle here, a bundle there, are barely the tip of the black market iceberg. Regulating in place of prohibition would gore the ox of a lot of self-righteous people.
Just think, ARod (Alex Rodriguez of the NY Yankees) could put another 3 stacks around this, put some plywood on top and hire Pink Floyd to get on stage and sing ‘Money’.
Sung to “Money for Nothing”…
I want my…
I want my…
I want my THC…
Let’s see -
1) Meth dollars outsourced to Mexican economy – CHECK
2) American cold/allergy sufferers thoroughly and needlessly inconvenienced – CHECK
3) Slightest hint of a dent made in meth use in USA – NO DICE
4) Drug traffickers deterred by severe sentences for smuggling marijuana, now switched to importing / selling 1000x more harmful but more profitable substance – CHECK
There must be a dozen politicians now impatiently waiting put the money in their pockets after the press is done taking pics at the heap of cash.
If drugs were legal (well, pot anyway), that could be a couple hours worth of tax dollars to support the illegal wars we’ve had.
Apropos of nothing, the house Bill Gates built cost about half the amount in this pile.
I live in Mexico City. The money (from all drug raids) will be split 3 ways. A third to the Mexican AFI (DEA) yearly budget (they must give account of what the get and where and how they spend it). Believe it or not, a few weeks ago there was a news report on the news here of Mexico City police cars that won’t start, others couldn’t move for mechanical problems, others that had no radios, etc. Jokes about the poor quality of police vehicles would be more true than rich spending here. They are updating their vehicles slowly. A third part to drug rehab programs in Mexico. A third to the Mexican legislative branch (the Mexican congress). In comparacion, last month Bush broke a cold shoulder treatment by the US of Mexico for the last 6 years with a generous 150 million for 2007 to help Calderon continue his fight against the drug lords. Joke about this guys but it appears Mexico is trying to clean up its part in international drug trade. Where are similar busts happening in the USA? Don’t seem to see the seizure of money nor drugs?
Two out of 7 or so arrested were chinese. All of them are linked to Columbian drug lords and their Mexican Cartels.
I would reflect that the general feeling in Mexico is that we are middle men in the whole thing. The USA does absolutely nothing to stop consumption, therefore the system continues. Americans blame Mexicans, but it is just a pit stop between Columbia and the USA. On neither end the Mexicans are really in control of anything.
Drug lords have ruled Mexico for years now, and outside of IRAQ, Mexico has the highest rate of kidnappings and unresolved disappearances that later turn up as unresolved deaths in the world. These guys are attacking police stations down here for vengeance with submachine guns. In Nuevo Laredo, the body count (a lot were policemen) went up into the hundreds last year. Chief’s of police are being gunned down with their families in their homes. A Mexican senator last month (who voted for heavy backing of the anti-drug effort) was shot in his car, his driver killed, and he survived though in critical condition. Something like 100+ bullets shot at his vehicle while he and he driver was inside.
If you want to kick at Mexico, just remember, consumption here is much lower any way you look at it than the USA. There is no money here for the drug lords, and the vast majority of drug goes north. It is because the US has refused to get serious about stopping the low level street traffic of drugs that this thing still abounds. Rich people who have to have their fix because they are too stupid and “poor” (mentally and socially) to get a handle on life any other way.
If you think there was corruption in that the “federales” (where did you get that term, from the 60′s?) The PFP (Federal Preventive Police) and the AFI (Federal Investigative Agency like FBI) took part in the raid. If they were to have taken something, there probably would not have been anything reported. This comes from the PGR’s investigation that chemicals were imported from India by a legit Mexican pharmaseudical drug company. They had legal permits, legit business, etc to import the stuff to make cold medicine, but the PGR investigated them anyway and hit the jackpot. By the way, most Mexico City police make a standard $400 dollars US per month which is 4 times the mexican poverty level minimum wage.
People who never leave the US shouldn’t comment so much on what happens in world affairs or what happens in other countries. (In my humble opinion).
Your statements are, I’m sure, quite sincere. But nevertheless, the Mexican government, and particularly law enforcement, at all levels, are remarkably corrupt. Persons highly sympathetic to the plight of the Mexican people will invariably cite their poverty as an exculpatory factor and the root cause of the corruption. But more objective observers have demonstrated long ago that it’s a lot more complex than that. The corruption certainly contributes to the impoverishment of the citizens, but those same citizens, as a matter of national character and long-accepted tradition, feed that corruption with a combination of rationalization of dishonesty as being made necessary by poverty, a collective fatalism that promotes the universal sentiment of “why bother,” and a range of -centric behaviors and attitudes, particularly egocentrism and ethnocentrism. I have lived for over 15 years in a city over 35% Mexican and have observed the collective and individual behaviors and am under no delusions regarding the Mexican people.
I would further delineate the individual and collective psychological traits that are behind the situation of Mexicans in both Mexico and the US.
Suffice it to say, Attorney General Gonzales is an excellent example of the stereotypical Mexican politico. He is more than willing to apply his efforts and successes in his profession (i.e. being one of those paragons of moral, ethical behavior, a lawyer), not to help his less fortunate Mexican brethren, but to instead cozy up to his own people’s enemies, to sell out his own brothers and sisters for personal riches and influence. He was, in notoriously corrupt Texas politics, a liar and a hypocrite, and with the help of fellow corrupt Texans, has brought his turncoat mentality to a national audience, doing his part to help renodel the US Justice Department along the lines of its Mexican counterpart . And the Mexican government – and therefore, the Mexican gen pop – features no shortage of individuals struck from the same mold.
When many Mexicans succeed here, as there, they immediately shed any connection with their peasant roots and seek to emulate, flatter and thereby join, the ruling class. This, despite all the rationalizations, is time-honored Mexican tradition.
I would hasten to note that this is not universally applicable across the board. There certainly are noble, dedicated, caring Mexicans who want very much to do what they can to help elevate the situation of their people, and work hard for that goal. They almost certainly outnumber the out-and-out corrupt, but in the end it doesn’t matter, since the sellouts, given their willingness to join their oppressors’ side against their own, are repaid by those same oppressors with power and influence the reformers are denied, so their influence is magnified and out of proportion to their numbers. They wind up calling the shots and leaving their countymen to struggle on their own.
All of Mexico’s failings are someone else’s fault. Always have been.
Ya.
i dont know about yall but some one isss veryyy pissed about taht money alot of people are going to get killed…. i believe if the police let the big timers do their thing they will get what they are in the game for money…. but u never mess with pplz money especially that much…i think that they should share the wealth… f tha police they need to keep their oink oink otta pplz bizz and snitches should end up DeD