Former Mexico president ‘took drug bribe’

MEXICO’S former president took a $100 million (£78 million) bribe from drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, the cartel leader’s secretary has told a New York courtroom.

Enrique Peña Nieto, who was president from 2012 until December last year, has always vehemently denied being in cahoots with the cartels.

But Alex Cifuentes, a Colombian who was Mr Guzman’s right-hand man until his capture in 2013, told the court the money was delivered via an intermediary while Mr Guzmán was on the run.

Mr Guzmán, 61, who has been on trial in federal court in Brooklyn since November, was extradited to the United States in January 2017 to face charges of trafficking cocaine, heroin and other drugs in to the country as leader of the cartel.

Mr Cifuentes, 50, testified that he had told US prosecutors that it was Mr Peña Nieto who initiated the conversation with Mr Guzmán, asking initially for $250million (£195million). A deal was struck and the sum reduced to $100million, the cartel operative said.

He also testified that Mr Guzmán had once told him that he had received a message from Mr Peña Nieto saying he did not have to live in hiding anymore.

A year ago, during a debrief by US prosecutors in a bid to reduce his own sentence, Mr Cifuentes said “that the president of Mexico had contacted Mr Guzmán” and that “the message was Mr Guzmán didn’t have to stay hidden”.

He told the court on Tuesday: “That’s exactly what Mr Guzmán said to me. They wanted to work with him.”

Mr Peña Nieto has not responded to the accusations, but his spokesman rubbished previous claims as “completely false and defamatory”, pointing out that it was his government that “pursued, captured and extradited the criminal Joaquín Guzmán”.

Mexicans have long suspected that governments tacitly support one cartel over the other, so as to have one dominant group rather than an all-out war.