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Written by Hot Video
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Sep 30, 2010 at 11:20 PM |
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MEXICO CITY — Authorities confiscated more than $200 million in U.S.
currency from a band of methamphetamine producers headquartered in one
of this city's ritziest neighborhoods, they said Friday, calling it the
largest drug cash seizure in history.
The bust reflected the
vast scope of an illegal drug trade linking Asia, Mexico and the U.S.,
officials said. Two of seven people arrested Thursday at a faux
Mediterranean villa in the Lomas de Chapultepec neighborhood were
Chinese nationals.
The group was part of a drug-trafficking
organization that imports "precursor chemicals" from companies in India
and China for processing into methamphetamine in Mexican "super labs,"
authorities said.
The methamphetamine eventually is sold in the United States.
The
arrest came after an investigation that began in December when
authorities seized 19 tons of pseudoephedrine, a cold medicine that is
a key ingredient in the production of methamphetamine, at a Mexican
port on the Pacific Coast.
A legally registered Mexican company,
listed by a trade association as the country's third largest importer
of pseudoephedrine, was implicated in the alleged crime, officials said.
Mexican
drug-trafficking organizations have become increasingly important in
the wholesale and retail trade in methamphetamines within the U.S.
because tougher controls have been placed on the sale in the U.S. of
the chemicals used to produce the drug.
Authorities said that
the band of traffickers was led by a naturalized Mexican of Chinese
descent who appeared to have left the country.
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