Mexico’s former defense minister, Salvador Cienfuegos, has been arrested by US federal drug police. He is the first high-ranking Mexican soldier arrested in the United States for drug-related corruption, reports The New York Times.
The 72-year-old general was arrested when he landed in Los Angeles for a vacation with the family, according to the Mexican government. The US FBI has been silent on details, but states that the suspicions against Salvador Cienfuegos are about drug-related money laundering and corruption.
The arrest comes ten months after the former head of Mexico’s federal police force, Genaro García Luna, was arrested in New York. Genaro García Luna, often called the architect behind the police war on drug cartels, is suspected of having taken bribes from the powerful Sinaloa cartel, which for decades was led by drug lord Joaquín Guzmán Loera, also known as El Chapo.
The police chief’s arrest was a direct result of testimony in the high-profile trial against El Chapo last year.
The United States has not confirmed whether the suspicions against Salvador Cienfuegos are also linked to the investigation against the Sinaloa cartel.
Salvador Cienfuegos served as Secretary of Defense from 2012 to 2018, a position that made him one of Mexico’s most powerful men at the time, just steps under then-President Enrique Peña Nieta.
During the period, cartel violence reached historic levels in the country, and the military was also accused of extrajudicial executions.