Tulum, Q.R. — An investigation into allegations of Tulum police officers letting a high ranking cartel leader go free is under way. The allegations stem from the report of an armed man inside a Tulum restaurant Wednesday.
Officials responding to the report are alleged to have arrived to find a high-ranking criminal leader inside the restaurant in the company of a woman. Further allegations include a payoff to those responding authorities to avoid his arrest and being handed over to the Public Ministry.
The State Attorney General (FGE) of Quintana Roo has confirmed the start of the investigation into the allegations.
On Wednesday in a brief statement the agency said “The FGE of Quintana Roo reports that it has initiated an investigation to clarify the facts where an armed person was reported inside the facilities of a restaurant in the municipality of Tulum.
“It should be noted that elements of the Tulum Municipal Police, as well as the Ministerial Police and the Navy, arrived to inspect the alleged suspect, who was in the company of a woman, who was not made available to the Public Ministry.
“Regarding the incident, the Prosecutor’s Office began an investigation against all the elements that participated in this incident and who have been fully identified, and if they have any responsibility, the full weight of the law will fall on them.”
Several local media have identified the armed man by name and with photos as the boss of the Caborca Cartel that operates in the southeast, including Tulum. However, the FGE says the photos circulating do not match the description of the suspect and have referred to them as “unofficial images”.
“After the dissemination of journalistic reports in various digital media which reveal the arrest and release of an alleged criminal leader with a video and photographs in a restaurant in Tulum pointing out the intervention of the State Attorney General’s Office, it is stated that there is no indication that indicates similarity or qualitative correspondence of phenotypic characteristics that indicate that the person seen in the images is the person indicated.
“Marked differences are observed in the shape of the face, the nasal tip and mouth, which do not coincide between both subjects in the publications, which have disseminated unofficial images or those from institutional sources,” the FGE reported Wednesday afternoon.
The current allegations are of responding authorities being paid millions of pesos in cash to not arrest the armed man reported in the Tulum restaurant Wednesday. The State Attorney General has not confirmed or denied any of the allegations, nor have they confirmed or denied the identity of the armed man as the Caborca Cartel boss.
