FORMER CHIEF LEO OF MEXICAN STATE OF NAYARIT NOW A 20-YEAR GUEST IN US GRAYBAR HOTEL

San Diegan who rose to power as corrupt Mexican attorney general sentenced to prison

By Kristina Davis

The San Diego Union-Tribune
September 26, 2019

As the top law enforcement officer of the Mexican state of Nayarit, Edgar Veytia projected an image of a no-nonsense crime fighter.

His path to attorney general had certainly been unique: born in Tijuana and raised as a dual U.S.-Mexico citizen in suburban San Diego before carving out a legal career in Nayarit, the homeland of his wife and her well-connected family.

But in the end, his path ended the same way it has for several of Mexico’s top officials: corruption.

On Thursday, Veytia, 49, was sentenced in a New York courtroom to 20years in prison for using the power of his office to assist a drug cartel in exchange for bribes.

“As a United States citizen with a home in California, the defendant could have left his life of corruption behind at any time,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Ryan Harris argued in a sentencing memorandum. “Instead, he chose to stay, enable these violent drug trafficking organizations, and accept the benefits of working with these criminals.”

The H-2 Cartel was led by Juan Francisco Patron Sanchez — known as “H-2" — and operated in Nayarit and Sinaloa as an affiliate of the powerful Beltran-Leyva Cartel.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration began investigating the organization in 2013 and determined it distributed on a monthly basis some 500 kilograms of heroin, 100 kilograms of cocaine, 200 kilograms of methamphetamine and 3,000 kilograms of marijuana to the United States, working with distribution cells in Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Ohio, Minnesota, North Carolina and New York, according to prosecutors.

The cartel made millions of dollars and engaged in “substantial violence including torture and dozens of homicides,” prosecutors said.

With Veytia’s help — secured by monthly bribes — the cartel operated with impunity in Nayarit.

According to the sentencing memorandum, Veytia — at times known by the moniker “El Diablo” — directed other corrupt Mexican law enforcement officers to aid the cartel beginning in 2013 and used them to pass messages to and from Patron Sanchez.

If cartel members were arrested, Veytia would make sure they got released from custody, prosecutors said. When the cartel murdered a rival drug trafficker in October 2015, Veytia helped cover it up, prosecutors said.


Veytia is also accused of sanctioning violence.

On several occasions, Patron Sanchez and Veytia discussed “processing” — or committing violent acts — against rival traffickers who were detained by Veytia’s corrupt officers.

In one March 15, 2016, discussion, Veytia advised Patron Sanchez that he was going to “process” a rival, and Patron Sanchez approved, calling the rival “dangerous,” according to prosecutors. Veytia later clarified to Patron Sanchez: “We are going to kill him,” the sentencing memo states.

In other instances, authorities said, Veytia directed corrupt officers to send rivals in their custody “to hell.”

At the same time, Patron Sanchez was rising among his own ranks. He purportedly took the helm of the Beltran-Leyva organization after the 2014 capture of leader Hector Beltran-Leyva. In February, Patron Sanchez and several of his leaders were killed by Mexican forces.

It’s not clear how Veytia became involved with H-2.

Veytia arrived in the Pacific coast state of Nayarit in the early 1990s and began working for his future wife’s brother, who he’d met in Tijuana, according to an account in the Mexico City newspaper Excelsior.

He sold tools purchased in Tijuana to bus drivers in Nayarit and attended law school at Universidad del Alica in the state capital of Tepic from 1992 to 1996. He got married, and his father-in-law later gave his wife a permit to operate a bus route between Tepic and the city of Compostela, the article said.

Veytia later worked his way up in law enforcement and became a confidant of the state’s governor. He even considered a gubernatorial run himself. In 2011, he survived an attempt on his life when a gunman sprayed his vehicle with bullets.

Two years later, he was named attorney general.

“The government does not dispute that the defendant was charged with a difficult task: enforcing the law in a place where corruption was significant and providing protection to people where powerful and violent criminal organizations had the apparent ability to kill with abandon,” Harris wrote in the court filing.

“At the same time, it is clear that the defendant made several choices that led to his life of crime: he chose a life of corruption that endangered the lives of the citizens of Nayarit. Instead of enforcing the criminal law against these drug trafficking organizations, he used the official machinery of his position to enable those organizations.”

Veytia was arrested in San Diego in March 2017 after he crossed from Tijuana’s A.L. Rodríguez International Airport through the Cross-Border Xpress bridge. He had a family home in Chula Vista.

He was transferred to New York and pleaded guilty in January to one county of participating in an international drug manufacturing and distribution conspiracy. He agreed to forfeit $1 million.

Prosecutors indicated that Veytia has expressed remorse for his actions, although all of Veytia’s sentencing documents elaborating on his position were filed under seal. A portion of the sentencing hearing on Thursday was also closed to the public.