The Mexican Financial Intelligence Unit (UIF) has frozen the bank accounts of Eduardo Cervantes Aguilar, mayor of Ixtlahuacán de los Membrillos, as part of a bilateral investigation into public officials’ and individuals’ links to criminal organizations – in particular, the Jalisco Nueva Generación Cartel (CJNG).
According to UIF, the measure is connected to an operation known as Agave Azul (Blue Agave), launched two weeks ago by the UIF and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), in which 1,939 bank accounts related to the CJNG have so far been immobilized.
The UIF also froze the bank account of the mayor of El Grullo, Jalisco, Mónica Marín Buenrostro, who belongs to the National Action Party (PAN). (Cervantes is affiliated with the Institutional Revolutionary Party – PRI.) This week, Marín vigorously denied the suggestion that she has enriched herself illegally.
Allegations of Cervantes Aguilar’s links to the CJNG surfaced in 2015, when he was elected for his first term as mayor of Ixtlahuacán. Reports at that time indicated that the federal Attorney’s General’s Office for Organized Crime (SEIDO) was investigating the mayor’s possible links to criminal organizations. In addition, Cervantes was also a key figure in a inquiry into the sale of weapons to civilians posing as municipal police.
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