“Ivan” for Borderland Beat
A specialized district judge in Mexico City declared that the expropriation of more than 2.2 million dollars seized almost ten years ago from Mexican drug trafficker Miguel Angel Treviño Morales “Z-40” and three of his co-defendants, after they were arrested by members of the Mexican Navy, was admissible.
The judgment was issued following the filing of such action by agents of the Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office attached to the Specialized Unit for the Extinction of Ownership, of the Unit for the Implementation of the Accusatory Criminal Procedure System of the Attorney General’s Office (FGR) in 2021.
The judge estimated that the amount of 2 million 278,125 US dollars that Treviño Morales and his co-defendants Abdón Federico Rodríguez García, Oscar Navarro Sánchez and Amador Esquivel Orozco had with them on July 15, 2013, the date on which they were arrested by the Navy, is money derived from the commission of illicit activities.
The Attorney General’s Office warned that the economic resources acquired, managed and guarded by the accused “represent the profits derived from the purchase and sale of narcotics, firearms, cartridges for firearms for the exclusive use of the Army, Navy and Air Force, kidnappings and extortion carried out by the accused in different parts of the Republic, mainly in Tamaulipas”.
Both “Z-40” and his co-defendants were criminally prosecuted for crimes of operations with resources of illicit origin and carrying firearms for the exclusive use of the Army, among others. However, regardless of this, the Attorney General’s Office requested the extinguishment of ownership of the secured money in order to declare the loss of the property rights of the defendants, without consideration or compensation.
The judge in the case issued a sentence in which the special way of extinguishment of ownership of the money was declared admissible since the constituent elements of the action brought by the Unit for the Implementation of the Accusatory Criminal Procedure System of the Attorney General’s Office were proven, while the defendants did not comply with their evidentiary obligation.
In addition to the money secured in the preliminary inquiry PGR/SEIDO/UEITA/099/2013, the extinguishment of ownership decreed contemplates the ordinary and extraordinary yields and interests generated by said money until the National Institute to Return the Stolen to the People administers said resources and manages their final destination.
The trial for extinguishment of ownership is not criminal, it is carried out through a jurisdictional process of civil nature, of patrimonial nature and with prevalence to orality, through a special way regulated by the National Law of Extinction of Ownership.