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Mexico acknowledges drug gang infiltration of police

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Tracy Wilkinson reports:

In a damning blow to its fight against drug traffickers, the Mexican government Monday acknowledged severe penetration of a top law enforcement agency by a vicious gang that may even have bought intelligence on U.S. operations from renegade employees. At least 35 officials and agents from an elite unit within the federal attorney general’s office have been fired or arrested in an investigation that began July 31 following tips from an informer. The officials, including a senior intelligence director, are believed to have been leaking sensitive information to the very traffickers they were investigating for as long as four years, prosecutors said. In exchange, prosecutors said, the corrupt government officials received monthly payments of $150,000 to $450,000 each from the so-called Beltran Leyva cartel, a drug gang based in the Pacific state of Sinaloa that is engaged in a bloody fight with rivals for domination of the region’s lucrative trade. The group has also been linked to crimes, including the May killing of Edgar Millan Gomez, acting chief of a federal police agency, who authorities believe was targeted in revenge for the arrest of alleged traffickers including top cartel operative Alfredo Beltran Leyva.

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Click here for more on Mexico and go here for more of our running coverage of the drug wars, ‘Mexico Under Siege.’

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

Image: Undated photos show Fernando Rivera Hernandez, left, and Miguel Colorado Gonzalez, both former employees of the organized crime unit of Mexico’s Attorney General’s office. Credit: Associated Press

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