Salamanca: The Mexican ‘drug mafia’ involved in smuggling of drugs over many years has now started smuggling fuel. An international news agency has claimed that the gangs hit severely in the vigorous anti-drug campaign have stopped smuggling drugs. The growing demand for fuel the world over, including Mexico, and the huge profits in the fuel smuggling business are the main reasons behind this shift, reported the news agency.
There is large scale farming, production and smuggling of opium in the central American country ‘Mexico’. There are big cartels involved in this business. Sinaloa, Beltran Levya, Juarez, La Familia Michoacana, Los Zetas are the names of these cartels and these 7 to 8 cartels were controlling the drugs business. The news agency has claimed that following the arrest of the chief of the Sinaloa cartel, Joaquin El Chapo the Mexican drug network started going bust.
In January, last year, Mexico extradited ‘El Chapo’ to the US. After this, the raids on these cartels increased in Mexico. Only last year a leader of one more cartel was arrested by the Mexican agencies and last month they extradited two cartel leaders to the US. The Mexican media are claiming that Mexico has started a campaign to finish this drugs business with the help of the American agencies.
This is forcing the Mexican cartels to give up the drugs smuggling and start some other business. According to this international news agency, this is why they have resorted to fuel smuggling. Since the last few years these cartels have been involved in theft and smuggling of fuel. But, now this will become their main business, said reporter from the news agency.
According to the Mexican government claims, these cartels are earning more than USD 21 billion from this business. This increasing fuel smuggling is becoming a headache for the Mexican government, said the news agency. The Mexican government has expressed concerns that the revenue of the government fuel company ‘Pemex’ can get affected by this fuel smuggling.
Fuel theft costs about USD 1 billion to the Mexican exchequer every year. This can increase manifold when these cartels start fuel smuggling. Therefore, stopping these cartels is a huge challenge posed in front of the Mexican government.
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