Mexican-Chinese drug supect arrested in Maryland

AP/Houston Chronicle:

U.S. federal agents have arrested a Mexico City businessman wanted in connection with one of the Western Hemisphere's largest trafficking rings for the main chemical ingredient in methamphetamine.

Zhenli Ye Gon was arrested in a Maryland restaurant Monday evening, four months after police discovered $207 million at his Mexico City mansion in what U.S. officials have called the world's biggest seizure of drug cash.

Mexican Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora called the arrest "magnificent news" and said Mexican officials had 60 days to file their legal arguments for Ye Gon's extradition. The Chinese-Mexican fugitive is wanted on organized crime, drug trafficking and weapons charges.

DEA spokesman Garrison Courtney said Ye Gon was arrested on drug smuggling and money laundering charges, adding that he was tracked down by agents and did not turn himself in.

Medina Mora said the cash seized at Ye Gon's home was connected to one of the hemisphere's largest networks for trafficking pseudoephedrine, the main ingredient in methamphetamines. He said the ring had been operating since 2004, illegally importing the substance and selling it to a drug cartel that mixed it into the crystal form and imported into the United States.

Ye Gon has said the chemicals imported by his company, Unimed Pharm Chem de Mexico SA, were legitimate and intended for use in prescription drugs to be made at a factory he was building in Toluca, just west of the Mexican capital.

Ye Gon also claimed that $150 million of the money belonged to Mexico's ruling party, and that he was forced to store it for party officials in his mansion under threat of death during the 2006 presidential race, which Felipe Calderon narrowly won.

Calderon has called the accusations "pure fiction."

Ye Gon's U.S.-based lawyer, Ning Ye, denounced the "lousy evidence made up by Mexican government" and said Ye Gon would apply for political asylum in the United States.

Ye said DEA agents swarmed a restaurant in Silver Spring, Md., where Ye Gon was dining with another member of his legal team. The agents also raided the house where Ye Gon had been staying. Ye Gon went willingly, he said.

...

Ye Gon apparently wants to be tried in the US which is counterintuitive for most Mexican drug suspects. It will be interesting to find out whether his suppliers for the meth ingredients were from China. I suspect they probably were.

The story does not indicate how long his family has been in Mexico, but there have been Chinese immigrants in the country for over a hundred years. Some of the best Chinese food I have ever had came from a restaurant in Juarez across from El Paso. The owners were descendants of people who had been brought in to work on the rail road who decided to stay and make a life across the border.

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