A major crackdown on the illegal fuel trade has resulted in the arrest of 14 people in Mexico, with more actions expected to follow as the investigation continues.
Among those detained were customs employees, businessmen and six members of the military, including a vice admiral.
Attorney General Alejandro Gertz and Security Minister Omar García Harfuch announced the apprehensions on Sunday, with Gertz adding that additional arrests were forthcoming, potentially including government officials.
García Harfuch traced the arrests back to the seizure of a petroleum tanker in the Gulf Coast port of Tampico in March.
The tanker, Challenge Procyon, was carrying diesel on which a special import tax was due, but the cargo was declared to customs as a petrochemical exempt from the tax.
This seizure, one of the largest in recent history, prompted a series of investigative and intelligence efforts that revealed part of the criminal structure behind these activities, Gertz said during a press conference.
Navy seizes over 17 million liters of stolen fuel in double ‘huachicol’ busts
The newspaper El Universal reported that authorities have filed requests for more than 200 arrest warrants related to fuel theft.
Fuel theft — or huachicol, as it is known in Mexico — has cost the state-owned oil company Pemex US $3.8 billion in the past five years, according to The Associated Press.
In May, Anti-Corruption and Good Government Minister Raquel Buenrostro said that “each unloading” of a shipment of fuel for which the IEPS — Special Tax on Production and Services — is not paid costs the government around 1 billion pesos (US $51.7 million).
Mexican security analyst David Saucedo told The Associated Press that the investigation indicates that illegal networks profiting from fuel theft benefit from “wide levels of corruption in Mexico’s government and businesses.”
“Huachicol networks require a level of political, military and police protection,” Saucedo said, adding that recent pressure from U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is largely responsible for the recent aggressive crackdown.
Gertz and García Harfuch on Sunday maintained the sailors arrested represented “isolated cases” within the Navy and dodged questions about the depth of the fuel theft networks within the government.
Although Vice Admiral Roberto Farías Laguna was among those arrested and is related to former Navy Minister Rafael Ojeda (2018-2024), Admiral Ojeda is not a suspect. Gertz said Ojeda filed a formal complaint while still in office and that case file contributed to the current investigation.
Also arrested was Francisco Javier Antonio Martínez, the former director of Customs in Matamoros (2017-2018), who, in 2024, was placed in charge of administration and financial management at the port of Tampico.
The case against Martínez took shape when his business relationship with the owners of Intanza, a company found complicit in the March bust in Tampico, became public knowledge.
With reports from El Financiero, The Associated Press, El Economista and El Universal
