The week before last, murder of Carlos Narváezone morning in front of the building where he lived in Polanco, reopened a story that last Sunday’s debate had put on the table. Narváez was a powerful official during Horacio Duarte’s period in the customs system and was even proposed to replace him. Finally, Rafael Marín Mollinedo arrived, only for a few months, but Narváez continued in Customs until it was transferred to the Defending (land customs) and the Navy (maritime) and then he resigned.
With the murder of Narváez, versions resurfaced that this death was related to another that occurred in November 2021that of Sergio Carmona, murdered in San Pedro Garza García.
Sergio Carmona He was a Tamaulipas businessman known as king of huachicol, who was actively involved in political campaigns in that and several other states. If in the past he had financed campaigns of other parties, since the change of six-year term his operation was closely linked to Morena. On November 22, 2021, he was in a barbershop shaving when a hitman approached, shot him in the head and killed him.
Carmona was very close, through his brother Julio Carmona, to the first director of Customs in the six-year term, Ricardo Peralta, who later was undersecretary of the Interior with Olga Sánchez Cordero, and continued with a close relationship with his successor Horacio Duarte, who was in customs until 2022 and who is now the secretary of the government of the state of Mexico.
Julio, Sergio’s brother, was appointed none other than director of the Reynosa customs, where countless irregularities were committed, including the diversion of funds and acts of corruption. It was so remarkable corruption that cost Julio Carmona his job.
After the murder of Sergio Carmona, his brother Julio fled to the United States where he made himself available to the authorities of that country and then a network of secret accounts for money laundering in different tax havens with million-dollar amounts began to be revealed.
The United States Department of the Treasury found bank accounts with more than 60 million dollars. But the fortune of the Carmona brothers, a product of huachicol, according to US media citing sources from the American Union, would exceed two billion dollars. Carmona had accounts in the Cayman Islands, the Netherlands and Bermuda.
One of the topics that was raised in Sunday’s debate was the alleged relationship between Mario Delgado, leader of Morena, and Sergio Carmona. It is true that Delgado once traveled on Carmona’s plane, and that he would have supported Morena campaigns in Tamaulipas and Sinaloa, but the main accusations do not revolve around the president of Morena but rather those who were in the customs directorate in the first years of the six-year term, when this illegal operation of billions of pesos was carried out. And they broke out during Duarte’s administration, when Carmona was assassinated.
Investigations by the United States Department of the Treasury, and by the Attorney General’s Office itself, involve a wide network of customs officials who collaborated with American gangs that cloned cards, and bought diesel, gasoline and biodiesel and imported it to Mexico. as mineral oil via customs control.
The issue is very advanced in the United States not only because of the information provided by Julio Carmona, but also because it involves criminal organizations within that country, complicit in this network of Mexican operators. The information that Xóchitl presented has serious bases but the axis of the investigation is not Delgado, it is the customs officials
The US agencies also involve former governor Jaime Bonilla of BC (for operations similar to those carried out in Tamaulipas during his term in office), and Juan Carlos Madero Larios, former head of Customs Operation. The investigation began, when Julio Carmona had already appeared before the US authorities, based on complaints made in 2022 by the Texas company Know Control.
Last year Excélsior published that based on one of the leaked documents from the National Defense in August 2022, when Duarte was about to leave his responsibility in Customs, Secretary General Luis Cresencio Sandoval, warned and requested to investigate alleged crimes committed in the Customs system, such as bribes, extortion and huachicol, to the head of the National Intelligence Center, General Audomaro Martínez.
According to official letter 812, dated August 18 of that year, the military command presented allegations of corruption against Juan Carlos Madero Larios, Álvaro Alejandro Hernández Sierra, general director of Evaluation; Alejandro César Reyna Carrillo, general director of Information Technologies, and Leonel Arturo Escalona González.
In the document, classified as confidential, General Sandoval warned of serious corruption in the National Customs Agency of Mexico and the network that existed around these officials.
The investigations established that they were related to bribes to external operators; smuggling of hydrocarbons and sea cucumbers; as well as manipulating the Parameterization System, consisting of customs recognition by alert, with the aim of extorting customs agents. That is the central thread of the investigation, in Mexico and in the United States.
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