Prosecutors are requesting a term of 10 years for Iván Reyes Arzate, the former head of the Sensitive Investigations Unit (SIU) for the Mexican Federal Police (PF), for taking hundreds of thousand of dollars in bribes in exchange for offering official protection for a cocaine trafficking organization. Reyes Arzate was facing three felony counts for conspiracies to import and distribute cocaine in 2016.
A 13-year veteran of the SIU, Reyes Arzate was appointed to lead the unit in 2008 by Secretary of Public Security (SSP) Genaro García Luna, Mexico's top federal law enforcement official at the time.
Before the PF was absorbed into Mexico's National Guard in October 2019, members of the SIU were carefully vetted and trained in Quantico, Virginia by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and Department of Justice.
The SIU worked with the DEA on major drug trafficking and money laundering investigations. Until investigators claim they learned of his involvement in the conspiracy, Reyes Arzate was the principal intermediary for sharing information between U.S. law enforcement agencies and the Mexican PF.
According to a February 2017 criminal complaint, the DEA claims they learned that Reyes Arzate was leaking information about their investigation to Gerónimo Gamez García, the cousin of infamous drug trafficker Arturo Beltrán Leyva, who was killed by the Mexican Navy in a gun battle in December 2009. At the time, the DEA hailed the demise of Beltrán Leyva as a "catastrophic blow" to the cartels and a "great victory" for Mexico's president, Felipe Calderón (2006-2012).
The DEA claims they discovered that information shared directly with the commander of the SIU was subsequently passed along in text messages to the target of their investigation, Gamez García, a drug trafficker in Mexico indicted in 2017 for coordinating multi-ton shipments of Colombian cocaine to Chicago.
Angel Dominguez Ramirez Jr. was a former U.S. Marine combat veteran who worked with nearly every major drug trafficking organization in Mexico. U.S. investigators claim they learned that a mole within the SIU was passing sensitive information from the DEA to the trafficking network headed by Dominguez Ramirez Jr. In September 2016, the DEA determined that Reyes Arzate was the mole when information they shared directly with him was passed on to Gamez García, one of the investigation's targets, in text messages which they intercepted. Reyes Arzate sent a photograph and information about the identity of the DEA's confidential informant to Gamez García and instructed him to get rid of his communications devices.
Dominguez Ramirez Jr. coordinated drug shipments with the Beltrán Leyva, Sinaloa, Zetas, Gulf and Jalisco New Generation cartels which were smuggled into Texas and California. He pleaded guilty to leading a "vast drug smuggling and money laundering empire" in November 2021.
In October 2021, Reyes Arzate pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to traffic cocaine. It's speculated that he will testify against his former mentor, Genaro García Luna.
Described as the architect of Mexico's war against drug cartels, García Luna was arrested in Texas in December 2019 for alleged multi-ton cocaine trafficking and money laundering conspiracies spanning almost 19 years through his tenures as the head of Mexico's Federal Investigative Agency (2001-2005) and the Secretary of Public Security (2006-2012), and into his career in the private sector as the CEO of a security consultancy with offices in Miami and Mexico City.
Curiously, the other board members at García Luna's consulting firm were former top security officials from Spain, Colombia and the U.S., including the former chief of Central Intelligence Agency's clandestine service, Jose Rodriguez, and the former head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Mexico office, Raul Roldan. Jose Rodriguez famously ordered the destruction of the CIA's videotaped torture sessions.
Despite Iván Reyes Arzate's abuse of his position of authority and betrayal of his duty within that trusted position, despite being vetted and trained and supervised by the DEA and other U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies that exist supposedly to counter major drug trafficking networks, despite protecting a major criminal network moving multiple tons of illegal drugs produced and smuggled through a supply chain which has left a trail of death and immiseration on an almost incomprehensible scale in its wake for decades—despite all of that—the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York is requesting a sentence not to exceed 120 months (10 years).
Reyes Arzate, who helped a drug trafficking organization smuggling multi-ton quantities of illegal drugs for decades, has been in custody in the U.S. for precisely 60 months (5 years) already. If the judge sentenced him to the fullest extent that the prosecution is asking for, he's looking at 5 years at most with credit for time served. His defense is asking for 60 months.
Last year, a man who was promised $500 if he could successfully cross 23 kilos of meth into Texas was caught and sentenced to 70 months in federal prison.
