US Government Provides Mexico with Intelligence Info about Tamaulipas Governor Cabeza de Vaca

 "Redlogarythm" for Borderland Beat

Yesterday, Mexico's Office of the Prosecutor (FGR) released a public statement confirming that the United States Department of Justice had shared information and intelligence data regarding Tamaulipas Governor Francisco Javier Gracia de Vaca's illicit financial operations. The information shared also includes data about some of the Governor's closest collaborators and businesses established in US soil.

The FGR identified the Governor by his first name, Francisco Javier. The statement also included a reference to his two brother Ismael and José Manuel as well as his father-in-law José Ramón Gómez Reséndez. It also mentioned that several commercial businesses, developer and industrial companies had also been identified for being linked to illegal money transfers, banking irregularities and illegal operations.

According to the FGR, this new information will be added to the criminal investigation that is currently underway against the Governor.

Cabeza de Vaca himself has used Twitter to explain that he has asked his lawyers to compile these new evidences in order to review them. A right that he must have "as part of the legal procedure", he said.

Background:

As Borderland Beat has exposed in a recent series of investigative articles, Tamaulipas Governor Francisco Javier García Cabeza de Vaca has a remarkably dark political career.

Once a mid-level bureaucrat in the ranks of the National Action Party (PAN), he used his connections with the family of president Vicente Fox to climb within the apparatus of the party. He became mayor of Reynosa in 2004, apparently thanks to the funds that the Gulf Cartel duly paid in exchange of political patronage and protection, as Borderland Beat showed in last week's article. From there he became a high-ranking member within the PAN leadership, and won the Governorship of Tamaulipas in 2016.

Nevertheless, Cabeza de Vaca was not able to conceal the accumulating rumors, and what started as a series of disconnected vague allegations about his murky past became an avalanche of mud in February 2021, when after a series of brief news about criminal investigations against his figure, the FGR officially filed a criminal complaint against the Governor for the charges of organized crime, tax evasion and operations with funds of illicit origin.

At the same time, the FGR asked for Cabeza de Vaca's revocation of powers (a legal figure in the field of Mexican Constitutional Law known as desafuero).

After a series of legislative skirmishes, the Chamber of Deputies voted for Cabeza de Vaca's desafuero on the last week of April, ordering his removal from the Governor's office with immediate effects. But the Tamaulipas´ Congress rejected this order arguing that the Deputies had no right to oust Cabeza de Vaca from power and filed a controversy against the decision at Mexico's Supreme Court, which now has to decide about its constitutionality. 

Meanwhile, Cabeza de Vaca has left Mexico in search of a safer zone from where to defend his "honor" and "innocence". This safe space has been, of course, United States. We must remember that the Governor is a US citizen too (he has dual Mexican and American nationality).

From an unknown location inside the US, he is currently trying to still pose as the real Governor of Tamaulipas while at the same time has made several moves organizing his legal defense.

On April 23, it was made public that through the intermediation of his wife Cabeza de Vaca had hired a Houston-based legal firm, Gerger Hennesy & Mc Farlane, specialized in handling "complex investigations by state and federal enforcement and regulatory agencies, including the Department of Justice, the FBI, the Securities Exchange Commission (...) and the DEA. Their areas of expertise include environmental issues, (...), price fixing, trade sanctions, money laundering, public contracts/corruption, fraud or immigration (...)" according to their own webpage.

Analysis

It is remarkable that the US has decided to share information not only about Governor Cabeza de Vaca but also about his crew of accomplices that he has led during most of his political career: mainly his two brothers, José Manuel and Ismael, and his father-in-law José Ramón Gómez Reséndez.

These individuals have been constantly linked to corruption practices led and administered by the Governor himself. In the case of his two brothers, they have been accused of receiving massive amounts of money in the form of public contracts for the building of public infrastructure all over the State of Tamaulipas. Contracts awarded by the intermediation of his brother, of course.

In the case of Cabeza de Vaca's father-in-law, he has been accused of being a huachicolero (oil theft) leader at least since the early 2000s. As Borderland Beat reported, his Transportes Gor business group has been accused of importing and exporting illegal gasoline in what could constitute one of Mexico's biggest tax frauds ever.

We do not know the names of the companies which the US has shared info, but it is very probable that they are some of the dozen legal entities constituted during the early 2000s by the Cabeza de Vaca family in the State of Texas and whose main objective was to act as cash pools. They received the money obtained illegally by the family in Mexico (product of kickbacks, corruption and probably drug trafficking money) and re-invested it in local real estate and further business projects. They were able to create a vast economic empire managed by a family that before Cabeza de Vaca's entrance in politics in the late 1990s has not been so wealthy.

If this is the case, Cabeza de Vaca would be proving himself as the last card in the long and thick shuffle of Mexican predatory-Governors. Their identities, stories and corruption practices are always very similar. They conceive Mexican politics as an immense chess table on which to use their own political party for occupying every single square.

When their hegemony is unquestionable, they start sacking the resources of the State and placing the results of the robbery beyond borders (mainly in the US for its closeness, but also in off-shore jurisdictions such as Panama or Andorra) in order to prevent their identification. Eventually, they lose power and are fed to both the media and the public opinion as the few rotten apples while new queens and kings join the match in search for new squares of resources and impunity.

The time will tell if Cabeza de Vaca is able to escape from the hands of Mexico's justice. Currently, his chances of leaving the Mexican chess table intact are almost non-existent.

Note: Borderland Beat is currently working in the third and final episode of "The Private Empire of Tamaulipas Governor Cabeza de Vaca", which will be published in a week. This article will be focused on the analysis and functioning of the corrupted structure that the clan used for sacking the State's resources. It will also include information and real data about the individuals and companies included in US investigation.