NY.- Ivan Reyes Arzate, former Federal Police chief who was the liaison with the US drug agency DEA, pleaded not guilty on Friday of cocaine trafficking charges in a New York court.
According to the prosecution, Reyes Arzate, who led a unit of special investigations of the Federal Police for several years, has been designated by the United States as a corrupt policeman who delivered US information to Mexican drug cartels, including Beltran Leyva and Follow-up 39, associated with the Sinaloa Cartel.
Reyes Arzate was scheduled to be released and deported to Mexico on January 27 after serving a jail sentence imposed by a Chicago court in 2018, before which he had acknowledged his guilt for passing information to a cartel.
The federal prosecutor of the East district of New York, Richard P. Donoghue, links the case of Reyes Arzate with that of former Secretary of Public Security, Genaro García Luna, accused of drug trafficking by another New York court.
Also read: Former commander who informed drug lords in Chicago sentenced
In addition, he relates him to Joaquín “el Chapo” Guzmán, who was sentenced last year to life in prison for drug trafficking.
The charges against Reyes Arzate emerge from the bribes he received in exchange for information from the Mexican cartel El Monitoring 39, which was associated, among others, with that of Sinaloa, directed by Joaquín Guzmán and with the organization headed by narco Arturo Beltrán Leyva, a faction of the Sinaloa cartel from which it later separated and with which it would end up facing in 2008.
In 2018, Reyes Arzate was sentenced in Chicago to three years in prison for passing information to the cartels. When he was about to serve his sentence he was transferred to New York and charged with the new drug charges.
Arzate turned himself in to the U.S. authorities in 2017 and in May changed his innocent plea to someone who prefers to refrain from responding to accusations of obstruction and conspiring to obstruct justice.
Sergio Villarreal Barragán, aka “El Grande,” who for a long time was the confidant of the Beltrán Leyva cartel leaders, then testified before federal district judge Harry Leinenweber, and described how criminal groups rely heavily on police officers. corrupt like Arzate to expand its illegal operations and defeat its rivals.
According to US authorities, Reyes Arzate had routine contact with DEA agents in Mexico City. In exchange for thousands of dollars in bribes, the police helped the cartels to traffic cocaine. Assistance to Beltran Leyva allegedly occurred in the mid to late 2000s.
Iván Reyes Arzate was the main contact to exchange information between the US agencies and the Mexican Federal Police.
Arzate allegedly used intelligence information from the United States to help reveal the identity of a cartel informant, who was subsequently tortured and killed.
At the 2018 trial, DEA agent Matthew Sandberg, who came to work with the ex-commander in Mexico, described how the disclosure of Arzate, whom he came to consider a friend, endangered the lives of agents Like him and even his families.
According to the fiscal document, during the time that Reyes Arzate held the position of commander of the Police, between 2008 and 2016, years in which he agreed with Genaro García Luna when he was Secretary of Public Security, he also became the main link of contact between Mexico and the US security forces, including the anti-drug department.
“He helped Mexican cartels channel cocaine to the United States, including New York, in exchange for at least hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes,” the prosecutor said.
Reyes Arzate’s lawyer, Mark DeMarco, did not speak to journalists at the end of Friday’s hearing.
A prosecutor explained to Judge Pollak that the US government is talking to the Mexican pillage to see if an agreement is reached and it is prevented from going to trial.
Reyes Arzate surrendered to U.S. authorities in 2017.
The special units of the Mexican police, called SIU by its acronym in English (Sensitive Investigative Unit) emerged in the 90s to have groups of full confidence with which the United States could exchange sensitive information.
The case of Reyes Arzate raised many questions about how such an infiltration could persist for so long.
The next hearing for the Mexican pillage was set for February 19.
This Friday, Reyes Arzate, dressed in a light brown prisoner’s uniform, appeared at the federal court in Brooklyn with a calm expression and told the judge that he had reviewed with his ex officio lawyer the drug charges charged to him. Judge Cheryl Pollak ordered him to remain in detention.
García Luna is a prisoner in New York and has been charged by the same prosecutor’s office in the eastern district of the city with three charges of criminal association for cocaine trafficking.
A prosecutor on Friday requested that the case be transferred to Judge Brian Cogan, who presided over the trial of Mexican drug trafficker Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.
The request responds to what evidence that was discussed during that trial on the Beltrán Leyva is the same in the case of Reyes Arzate. The prosecutor also said that some evidence in the case of García Luna, who also chairs Cogan, will be the same as in the case of the former police chief.
“The government hopes to present evidence that García Luna accepted bribes from the Beltrán Leyva. Then, the government expects some tests to overlap in García Luna and Reyes Arzate. Due to these reasons, the case of Reyes Arzate is allegedly related to that of Guzmán Loera and García Luna, ”prosecutor Michael Robotti wrote in a letter.
AP and EFE
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