Mexico’s top security official, Omar Garcia Harfuch, has acknowledged that a widely publicized cartel fuel seizure touted last week as a major win against organized crime was not what officials initially described.
Harfuch said the raid actually took place two weeks before it was announced to the press. He also confirmed that the operation was carried out by a regional prosecutorial office and state authorities, not by any of the Attorney General’s Office’s specialized organized-crime units, as had been suggested. Perhaps most notably, Harfuch admitted authorities never confirmed that the seized fuel was actually huachicol, the term used for illegally trafficked petroleum tied to cartel operations.
Following the fallout, Juan Francisco Vera, the regional delegate for the Attorney General’s Office, was removed from his post.
The admission lines up with earlier reporting from Breitbart Texas, which found that the raided site was a legitimate oil storage facility holding valid government permits and a history of contracts with the Mexican government, not a hidden cartel operation. Mexican news outlets have since raised the possibility that the raid may have been an attempt by corrupt officials to extort the oil company rather than a genuine crackdown on trafficking. The case has since unraveled under public scrutiny.
Breitbart Texas’s earlier reporting suggested that Mexican officials have been staging raids and seizures to project the appearance of action against cartels, partly to ease pressure from the United States, which has been pushing Mexico to crack down harder on drug trafficking organizations.
A Broader Pattern of Shielding the Politically Connected
While Mexican authorities have pursued some cartel figures, critics say the government has continued to protect politically connected elites, allowing cartel operations, including the illegal fuel trade, to expand significantly since the Morena Party took power.
In a separate but related case, Breitbart Texas has reported that senior officials in Mexico’s Navy allegedly allowed large shipments of illegal fuel into the country. Two naval vice-admirals have been made the public face of that investigation, while officials appear to be working to keep the case from reaching former Secretary of the Navy Rafael Ojeda, who is the uncle of the two vice-admirals. Mexican news outlets and politicians have suggested that, if the investigation is allowed to proceed, it could eventually implicate Ojeda as well as the sons of former President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and other senior figures within Morena.
The fuel seizure controversy comes as Mexico has also been resisting the arrest and extradition of Sinaloa Governor Ruben Rocha Moya, who faces a U.S. federal indictment accusing him of drug trafficking conspiracy and weapons charges tied to alleged work for the Sinaloa Cartel, according to Breitbart Texas.
