Ineffective Asset Forfiture: “El Cóndor”, One Example

Translated by Yaqui for Borderland Beat from: Zeta

Carlos Manuel Hoo Ramírez, "El Condor"
Zeta Investigations:

The Office of the Attorney General of the Republic obtains rulings in favor against "small fish" and reverses  cases of relevant characters of crime. At last they are proceeding against a man close to "Chapo" Guzmán: his secretary "El Cóndor", regarding a building in Culiacán, Sinaloa.

To date, an action to extinguish the domain has been carried out 108 times since 2010, an annual average of 12 cases. Jesús Pérez, investigator of El Colef, analyzed 33 sentences and assures us that the legal figure is used "to cope with the monster of violence, but not as a  final way, to get out of these situations".

Note: Extinction of Domain is essentially Asset Forfiture; another tool in the legal toolbox.
Domain Extinction:  SOURCE: Article 3 of the Federal Law of Extinction of Domain:

It is the loss of the property rights of the property, without compensation or compensation whatsoever for its owner, or for those who behave or behave as such, provided that the goods are related to or linked to the crimes of organized crime, crimes against the health, kidnapping, theft of vehicles and trafficking in persons, in any of the following cases:

Those that are instruments, objects or proceeds of crime.
Those that have been used or intended to hide or mix assets that are the proceeds of crime and,
Those that are being used for the commission of crimes by a third party, if its owner was aware of it and did not notify the authority by any means, or did anything to prevent it.

With the exception of some missteps of the Public Ministry of the Federation, the actions of extinction of domain filed against members of organized crime have been relatively successful, with the issuance of most judicial declarations in favor of the authorities of the Mexican State; however, the results are still described as "small" when exercised against second-level criminals and for ridiculous amounts.

Narcotics traffickers like Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán, Fernando Sánchez Arellano, Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, Alfredo Beltrán Leyva and Servando Gómez Martínez, among others, have not had their assets touched much or their alleged fortunes; no one can say about the fugitives Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada Garcia, Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes "El Mencho" and Rafael Caro Quintero.

To date, since 2010, when the first termination trial was held, there are 108 cases, for an average annual average of 12 trials before the Third District Court of the Auxiliary Center of the First Region in its capacity as Ordinary, unique specialized in the matter for the entire Mexican Republic.

Carlos Manuel Hoo Ramírez, "El Condor":

Vehicles, jewelry, real estate, national and foreign currency in cash or in bank accounts, have become the domain of the Federation in sentencing drug dealers or narco-menudistas, car thieves, kidnappers, their families, their business ties, in pseudo-names and some landlords by being an instrument, product or object of a crime; By: Asset Forfiture.

One of the most recent cases is that of Gregorio "N", alias "El Güero Abeja" and co-accused, alleged members of the criminal organization La Familia Michoacana, who at the time of his capture - in addition to possessing firearms, codeine, morphine , marijuana and methamphetamine - had in a vehicle on a farm in Iguala, Guerrero, $200, 520 US dollars, 70,000, 500 Pesos in cash and 65 pieces of jewelry of precious metals.

The specialized judge declared the action of extinction of domain (6/2017) admissible followed by the agents of the Federal Public Ministry attached to the Special Prosecutor's Office for Investigation of Organized Crime (SEIDO), of the Attorney General's Office (PGR), in which proved the elements of its action with respect to numeraire and jewels insured six years ago.

However, it is still fresh, ie  the defeat of the Federal Government that could not keep  1,1500, 800 Pesos in cash and $131,000 US dollars secured in August 2014 of Juan José "N" alias "El Cora", son of drug trafficker Juan José Esparragoza Moreno "El Azul", one of the leaders of the Sinaloa Cartel. In April 2018, in the Court of the matter, the action of extinction of domain was declared inadmissible (20/2016), and on appeal, a Unitary Court confirmed the ruling.

The biggest failure so far for the PGR, is the setback suffered in the sentence (5/2014) of February 2015, in which he could not prove his action for the Federation to be made almost 26 million pesos and $610,000 US dollars that had been secured from Rubén Oseguera González "El Menchito", son of Nemesio Oseguera, leader of the Jalisco Nueva Generación Cartel (CJNG), during his first detention in Zapopan, Jalisco, on January 30, 2014.

The researcher Jesús Pérez Caballero, of El Colegio de la Frontera Norte (El Colef), estimates that there are difficulties for the Federal Law of Extinction of Domain to be exercised with the potential that it must have  three links that have been made by the Mexican authorities: the lack of an adequate analytical framework on organized crime, the lack of strategic vision and the formalism of the judicial system that grants many guarantees of defense to those involved.

Far From "EL CHAPO":

Eight years after the implementation of the figure of Domain Extinction, a few weeks ago the first approach to one of the characters closest to the drug trafficker Joaquín Archivaldo Guzmán Loera occurred, but it was not relevant as to the whereabouts of the alleged fortune that would locate the former leader of the Sinaloa Cartel as one of the richest men on the planet, according to public at the time the Forbes magazine .

This is the former member of the Secretariat of National Defense, Carlos Manuel Hoo Ramírez "El Cóndor" or "El Wache", against whom the last action of extinction of domain was exercised (5/2018), but only for who seeks a house in a Colonia on the outskirts of Culiacán, in Sinaloa. The former soldier was mentioned after Guzmán's arrest in February 2014, in Mazatlan, as his "secretary", the only person who was guarding him in those suites where the Navy caught them.

As plaintiff, prosecutors of the SEIDO filed a lawsuit against "El Cóndor" and his wife as co-defendants, for the purpose of extinguishing their domain ( confiscating ) over the property located on Calle Brasiles, number 3823 of the Colonia Alfa Project, in the Capital of Sinaloa, an area that still preserves dirt roads and half-built houses, where this urban lot became popular in recent times due to the arrest of its owner and being the target of federal operations.

The Third District Court of the Auxiliary Center of the First Region admitted the claim along with some evidence provided by the PGR as the property title issued by the City of Culiacán and the appraisal determined by experts in urban matters of the federal agency.

In its brief, the Public Ministry of the Federation considers that the property "is a product of the crime, as well as a mixture of proceeds of crime, derived from illicit activities, in the commission of the crime of organized crime, in the hypothesis of committing crimes against health, committed by Carlos Manuel Hoo Ramírez, "El Cóndor " and / or "El Wache" ". Your partner is a co-defendant because the property is titled in your favor.

Both co-defendants have already been summoned. The woman was notified at her home address to the legal action, while the "secretary" or bodyguard of Guzmán Loera , ie "El Condor" was stationed at the Federal Social Readaptation Center Number 1 "Altiplano", located in Almoloya de Juárez, State of Mexico, where he has been held for more than four years.

The specialized judge requested reports on the legal status of Hoo Ramírez. The Third District Judge in the State of Sinaloa, with residence in Culiacán, responded that on September 29, 2017, in criminal case 130/2014, he handed down a conviction against "El Cóndor".

For his responsibility in the commission of the crime of organized crime, for the purpose of committing crimes against health, a resolution that was confirmed on January 9, 2018, by the Third Unitary Court of the Twelfth Circuit in the Sinaloa capital.
                     
He is the person closest to "El Chapo" to whom a movable or immovable property is disputed, because other members of the Sinaloa Cartel have been plaza leaders or drug dealers without such an important link as Carlos Hoo. Not even the residences that connected with the deep drainage of Culiacán where Joaquín Guzmán escaped in 2014, or the house of Los Mochis, where he was detained in 2016, have been sued for domain extinction.

Iván Cazarín Molina, "El Tanque":

Jesús Pérez Caballero, Doctor in International Security and researcher at El Colef, has analyzed more than thirty sentences on how domain extinction works to understand criminal organizations in a text entitled " Likelihood and confusions about organized crime in extinction sentences Of domain. An analysis for Nuevo Leon ", which is part of the collective book next to publish" The police function in public safety policy. "

The academic establishes a series of ideas that he shares with the readers of ZETA on the analysis of 33 resolutions to which he had access. "First, the sentences of extinction of domain can not be operated in a vacuum, we do have a system where there are issues of impunity, where part of confused ideas about organized crime, then it is very difficult that the extinction of domain is likely to achieve cases high impact right? ", he said.

From his study he identified some problems not about the features of domain extinction, but about the official investigation process about the phenomenon of organized crime.

Gregorio Abeja Linares, "El Guero Abeja":

Gregorio Abeja Linares, "El Guero Abeja"

"There is no general framework from which to interpret organized crime in Mexico that allows us to act in a coherent manner. That is to say, by the judgments that I have seen, it is usual to act reactive when there is a possibility of impact, rather than because there is a pre-established plan of selection or prioritization of objectives. Either by especially harmful organizations, be it by specially symbolic places, or by especially serious crimes.

"There is no such criterion of prioritization or selection, at least at a general level, which would force us to use a tool as powerful as domain extinction. In the absence of that general framework resources are squandered seeking short-term results, then, one to see the judgments is to act against gangs of kidnappers with an amateur component, or in others it is attacked a certain criminal group , but there is no continuity within the judicial bodies, but each judge seems to make war on his own account in criminal cases, " said Pérez Caballero.

The researcher assures us that there is no strategic plan either: "There is neither the analytical framework nor a strategic plan that puts us in order all the objectives we have, right? There is something generic that is the fight against organized crime, which in the Law is defined in a quite contradictory way (Federal Law against Organized Crime of 1996) and there is a series of synergies between the common law and the federal jurisdiction that creates both blind spots as legal loopholes, which do not allow a coherent vision on the objectives of the Law of Extinction of Domain. It would be a bit like the two key points: the lack of that analytical framework and the lack of a strategic vision. "

Another knot, apart from this lack of analytical framework on organized crime and its link with the extinction of domain and lack of strategic vision, is the formalism of the Mexican judicial system, adds Dr. Pérez. "That is to say, there are many mechanisms of the individual to protect themselves from the authorities, or often mechanisms so that from the informality and lawfulness (you can be in the informality and do lawful activities), through a series of guidelines or techniques of activities of self-protection against the public powers have made it very easy to wade in the punitive power of the State. You see that in resources, you see in shelters, you see figures like the figureheads or 'straw men' , and so on.

"Then, combined with a formalism that has not given way to oral trials and there is still a lot to establish that change outside the formalist text and that goes to the facts, also makes it so the State can only act when it can act. When you have a type of medium, ie, when someone confesses that he owns a house. When it is a notorious fact that the house belongs to an individual, but of course, if it is not clear how it operates, what is the organization chart, what are the strong, weak, determinants of some very complex connections, which are public and private , then you can not have a clear idea of ​​what your assets are. "

The researcher concluded that the criminal process is being attacked and used against the links of a criminal chain, which are sometimes weak, peripheral or anecdotal, and some more are important, but no further investigation is made.

Offenses for which there are criminal proceeds:

According to the second fraction of Article 22 of the Constitution, the domain extinction will proceed in the cases of:

* Organized crime.   * Crimes against health .   * Kidnapping.     * Vehicle theft.

* Trafficking in people .   * Offenses/ Theft  of hydrocarbons.

* Those that are an instrument, object or proceeds of crime, even though the sentence that determines criminal responsibility has not been issued, but there are sufficient elements to determine that the unlawful act occurred.

Note: El Colef A University and Research Center founded in 1982 with regional branches in Mexico