The letter from El Mayo, Tamaulipas and Sinaloa

The letter from El Mayo Zambada , with all its interpretations, once again puts on the table the issue of the relationship between organized crime and sectors of Morena, huachicol, Tamaulipas and Sinaloa.

El Mayo 's lawyers in Mexico, whom he appointed to be in charge of getting him returned to Mexico, Juan Pablo Penilla and Juan Manuel Delgado , from the RPDM law firm, are two well-known followers of Morena.

Penilla was an advisor to the government of Américo Villarreal , recognized in the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate, but also a lawyer for the leaders of Los Zetas, El Z 40 and El Z42 , Miguel Ángel and Omar Treviño Morales , arrested in 2013 and who in 2011 ordered in Allende, Coahuila, what could be the largest massacre committed by drug trafficking groups in Mexico, with a death toll of 26, but with an estimate of up to 300 missing.

After more than a decade, El Z40 and El Z42 , who continue to operate their groups from prison, have not been able to be extradited to the United States. The latest ploy by the defense led by attorney Penilla , maintains, 12 years later, that Treviño Morales is not actually El Z40 , but a namesake. It is ridiculous, but it has served to avoid, until now, his extradition.

The relations of the Treviño Morales with the Cartel del Noreste, one of those designated as terrorists by the United States, are evident; their nephews and other relatives have been arrested when they served as their successors. They have also been involved with grassroots organizations, such as the Pedro J. Méndez column, which, despite being classified as part of organized crime, actively participates in Tamaulipas politics, supporting, by the way, Morena and in the last election the current governor Américo Villarreal , the same one who appointed Penilla as “honorary” legal advisor to the state government.

All of this intersects with the case of Sergio Carmona and its unfathomable repercussions. A few days before last year's elections, Carlos Narváez , a powerful official during Horacio Duarte 's period in the customs system, was assassinated in Polanco and was even proposed to replace him.

Finally, Rafael Marín Mollinedo arrived, only for a few months (who has now surprisingly returned to that position), but Narváez remained in Customs for a few months and resigned.

With the murder of Narváez , versions resurfaced that this death was related to another that occurred in November 2021, that of Sergio Carmona , murdered in San Pedro Garza García. Sergio Carmona was a Tamaulipas businessman known as the king of huachicol, who actively participated in political campaigns in that and several other states. If in the past he had financed campaigns of other parties, since 2018 his operation was closely linked to Morena.

Carmona was very close, through his brother Julio , to the first director of Customs in the six-year term, Ricardo Peralta , who later became 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 Government of the State of Mexico.

Sergio 's brother Julio was appointed director of the Reynosa customs office, where countless irregularities were committed. The corruption was so notable that it cost Julio Carmona his job. After Sergio 's murder, his brother fled to the US, where he placed himself at the disposal of the authorities of that country and then a network of secret accounts for money laundering in various tax havens with million-dollar amounts began to be revealed. The Treasury Department found bank accounts with more than 60 million dollars. But the fortune of the Carmona brothers, a product of huachicol, according to American media that cite sources from the American Union, would exceed 2 billion dollars. Carmona had accounts in the Cayman Islands, the Netherlands and Bermuda.

Investigations by the U.S. Treasury Department implicate a broad network of customs officials who collaborated with U.S. gangs that cloned credit cards and purchased diesel, gasoline and biodiesel and imported it into Mexico as mineral oil through customs controls.

The issue is very advanced in the United States, not only because of the information provided by Julio Carmona , but also because it implicates criminal organizations within that country, accomplices of that network of Mexican operators. The American agencies also implicate the former governor Jaime Bonilla of BC (for operations similar to those carried out in Tamaulipas), and Juan Carlos Madero Larios , former head of Customs Operations.

In 2023, Excélsior published that, based on one of the documents hacked from the Defense in August 2022, the then General Secretary Luis Cresencio Sandoval , requested the CNI to investigate alleged crimes committed in the Customs system, such as bribery, extortion and huachicol. According to 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 .

At that time, it was revealed that Carmona had financed Morena campaigns in 2021, the now governor Villarreal was the representative of Morena in Sinaloa, there are documents that show millionaire transfers to that and other campaigns attributed to Carmona 's resources. That plot is once again exposed in this issue.