Mexico busts reputed cartel money manager

Mexico City, Agency
A high-ranking member of the La Familia Michoacana crime organization was arrested by federal police, Mexico's Public Safety Department said Wednesday.

Ignacio "Nacho" Lopez Medina was nabbed in the course of an investigation into international money laundering, the department said in a statement.

Based in the western state of Michoacan, La Familia Michoacana makes money from drug trafficking, kidnapping, extortion and illegal mining. The outfit has sought to burnish its image with ordinary Mexicans by activities such as building schools and dealing out rough justice to rapists and robbers.

Lopez has admitted working for La Familia's head of operations, Servando Gomez Martinez, the Public Safety Department said.

Arrested along with Lopez were Leonor Castañeda Farias, Silvino Tellez Garcia and Yadira Esbeyde Garcia Landa, the latter a bank executive in the Pacific port city of Lazaro Cardenas.

The four suspects are accused of "operations with resources of illegal provenance and organized crime, as well as being members of the organization called La Familia Michoacana," the official statement said.

Authorities say they linked the suspects to 90 million pesos ($7.2 million) in illegal transactions.

Lopez was in charge of managing La Familia's ill-gotten gains, according to the Attorney General's Office, and had contacts with at least "three important international firms" engaged in exporting Mexican iron ore to China.

Those companies have exported approximately 1.1 million tons of illegally mined iron ore with a market value of $42 million, the Public Safety Department said.

Using the alias "Manuel Lombera Arias," Lopez traveled to the United States several times to create corporations funded with the proceeds of La Familia's criminal activity, the government statement said.

The police who arrested Lopez and the other suspects confiscated an AK-47 assault rifle emblazoned with the phrase "La mafia no perdona" (The mafia doesn't forgive), a 9 mm pistol, a bag filled with cocaine, a luxury SUV and communications gear.

Separately, authorities in the southeastern state of Tabasco announced the arrest of six people in connection with the killing late last year of the relatives of Mexican marine Melquisedet Angulo Cordova.

The five men and one woman, all suspected of being members of the Los Zetas drug cartel, killed Angulo Cordova's mother, two brothers and aunt, Tabasco Attorney General Rafael Gonzalez Lastra said.

Angulo Cordova died in the shootout in which drug lord Arturo Beltran Leyva was killed on Dec. 16 in Cuernavaca, the capital of Morelos state.

The marine's relatives were murdered Dec. 21 at the family's home in Paraiso, Tabasco, just hours after their loved one was laid to rest with full military honors.

Evidence indicates the suspects likely participated in the murders, Gonzalez Lastra said.

Seiki Oganda Gonzalez, known as "El Comandante Sierra" and suspected of being the Los Zetas chief in Tabasco, was among those arrested, the attorney general said.