Government accused in cash seizure

A drug suspect says a Mexican official forced him to hide millions.

By MARK STEVENSON
Published July 3, 2007

MEXICO CITY - A Chinese-Mexican businessman charged in the largest drug-related cash seizure in history accused a top Mexican official of forcing him to stash millions in illicit campaign funds in the walls and closets of his Mexico City mansion.

In the first major accusation linking the administration of President Felipe Calderon to Mexico's drug underworld, Zhenli Ye Gon says Javier Lozano Alarcon, now Mexico's labor secretary, threatened to kill him unless he stored bags stuffed with at least $150-million.

Responding to the letter Monday, Calderon spokesman Miguel Monterrubio said: "The Mexican government will not allow itself to be blackmailed."

Lozano Alarcon called the accusations "slanderous and defamatory."

Ye Gon, in a telephone interview later Monday, said he was hurt: "I never blackmailed the Mexican government. ... This is unfair, totally unfair."

But key details in his version of events seem contradictory, unclear or unverifiable, and a senior U.S. antidrug official said he knew of no evidence that the Calderon administration - which has sent troops into the streets to fight drug cartels - has links to organized crime.

Ye Gon is charged in Mexico with drug trafficking, money laundering and weapons possession for his alleged role in illegally importing 19 tons of a pseudoephedrine compound used to make methamphetamine - charges he denies. He is thought to be in the United States; Mexico considers him a fugitive.

At his lawyer's office in New York recently, Ye Gon gave the AP a very different version of the events laid out in the indictment against him.

He said the story began in May 2006, when Lozano Alarcon showed up at his house and threatened to kill him unless he stored millions in cash that purportedly came from the National Action Party's presidential campaign. He said additional shipments of cash were later delivered by a henchman.

According to Mexican authorities, they seized $207-million in cash at the house. Ye Gon says $150-million of it was from the National Action Party, and the rest was his.

As authorities have frozen his bank accounts, Ye Gon has been forced to cut back on his lavish lifestyle, and he said he would like to return to that life.

"I want to make things clear as soon as possible, " he said. "If the DEA tomorrow asks me, I will go with them, cooperate with them, or FBI, or CIA. I'd like to talk with them."

[Last modified July 2, 2007, 23:40:19]