Mexico’s government has eggs on its face after it carried out a large-scale raid at a fuel depot and tried to pass it off as a historic cartel fuel-theft raid. The embarrassing news came amid the victory dance when the company that owns the fuel depot produced documents and receipts showing the depot was in legal standing and had all the needed permits.
The incident began on September 17, when Mexico’s Attorney General’s Office (FGR), along with Mexican federal security forces, raided a large fuel depot in the state of Guanajuato, seizing 59 million liters of diesel. Mexican authorities hyped up the raid, claiming that the large-scale fuel complex was clandestine in nature and illegal.
The following day, Mexico’s top security official Omar Garcia Harfuch gave a press conference where he announced the “historic seizure” and claimed that while no arrests were made during the raid, arrests of illegal fuel dealers would follow.
The move follows an apparent crackdown on illegal fuel that is either stolen or smuggled into the country in a practice known as huachicol- a colloquial term for dirty fuel.
Hours after the news conference, the fuel company GRUPO SIMSA issued a news release claiming that its fuel depot in San Jose Iturbide, Guanajuato, was in full legal standing and had been operating for nine years. In its statement, Grupo SIMSA listed several permit numbers from state and federal licensing agencies, including national security, environmental, soil use, and transportation entities, that had all signed off on the depot’s use. The company said it had turned over all the documents to federal authorities, but the public can search for them in publicly available state, federal, and local government databases.
The revelation appears to show that the “historic” seizure was manufactured as a way to deflect public attention away from pressure by the U.S. government on its Mexican counterparts to crack down on corrupt politicians who have enabled terrorist cartels. Just days before the seizure, U.S. President Trump said that Mexico needed to do more in going after terrorist organizations and their political enablers. One of the most significant cases deals with the Governor of Sinaloa, Ruben Rocha Moya, who lives in Mexico with government protection while being a wanted fugitive of the U.S. Department of Justice on drug trafficking conspiracy and weapons charges for allegedly working for the Sinaloa Cartel, Breitbart Texas previously reported.
Most recently, Mexico’s government has been called into question over its former Secretary of the Navy Rafael Ojeda, who has gone “missing” as investigations point to him having been allegedly complicit in large-scale cartel fuel operations. Two of his nephews, who were naval vice-admirals at the time, are already in Mexican custody facing charges in a network that is believed to include the country’s political elite, including the sons of former Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, Breitbart Texas has reported.
Ildefonso Ortiz is an award-winning journalist with Breitbart News Foundation. He co-founded Breitbart News Foundation’s Cartel Chronicles project with Brandon Darby and senior Breitbart management. You can follow him on Twitter and on Facebook. He can be contacted at Iortiz@breitbart.com.
Brandon Darby is the managing director and editor-in-chief of Breitbart Texas. He co-founded Breitbart News Foundation’s Cartel Chronicles project with Ildefonso Ortiz and senior Breitbart management. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook. He can be contacted at bdarby@breitbart.com.