Mexico's military seized $26.2 million in cash believed to belong to members of the Sinaloa [2] Cartel Sept. 14. The soldiers also found guns and two bags of marijuana in the weekend raid at the house in the city of Culiacán—as well as documents naming a member of a gang allegedly led by Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada, an associate of fugitive Sinaloa cartel kingpin Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman.
Authorities said it was the second largest cash seizure in Mexican history. The biggest was in March 2007 when police seized $207 million supposedly linked to a trafficking ring for pseudoephedrine, the main ingredient in methamphetamine. (AP [3], Reuters [4], Sept. 19) The $207 million was seized from the home of Chinese-Mexican businessman Zhenli Ye Gon in Mexico City's fashionable Lomas de Chapultepec district. Ye Gon's wife and six others were arrested in the raid, but Ye Gon remains a fugitive. (LAT [5], July 17)
See our last post on Mexico's narco war [6].
