Mexico has accused its former top drug cop of accepting bribes from a drug cartel. According to officials, Noe Ramirez Mandujano—then head of the Special Organized Crime Investigation Division—took $450,000 from a member of the Pacific drug cartel. Ramirez was promised identical amounts monthly in exchange for inside information about police activities. The potential of nearly $5 million a year was enough to corrupt Ramirez and, before being arrested Thursday, he allegedly met twice with members of the cartel to solidify the deal.
Mexican president Felipe Calderon has lately cracked down on police corruption after the U.S. government, which funds a large part of Mexico’s drug war, tied up about $45 million in funds until an effort was made to root out bad cops and officials. Calderon said about the arrest: “The Mexican government is strongly committed to fighting against not only organized crime but the corruption that organized crime generates, and that has become entrenched over years and perhaps decades in the structures of power.”
The scandal is the most serious in Mexico since the 1997 arrest of Jesus Gutierrez Rebollo, who was then the top man at Mexico’s anti-drug agency and whose illicit dealings with drug lords provided the basis for the Hollywood movie Traffic. Despite President Calderon’s efforts to put a positive spin on Ramirez’s arrest, the event only reinforces suspicions among a cynical public that police corruption is rampant. These suspicions are not exactly unfounded. An early 2008 study conducted by the non-profit organization Transparency Mexico showed that Mexican citizens doled out US$2.58 billion in bribes in 2007.
