Army inflated seizure figures with hundreds of labs inactive, investigation finds

mexican army reviewed the drastic increase in the number of drug lab seizures he claims to have made during the President’s tenure Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), according to government data and leaked military documents reviewed by Reuters.

Documents found among millions of emails leaked last year by hacker group Guacamaya show the upward revision is due to the military retroactively included hundreds of dormant labs on its seizure list under the current presidency. Figures from previous administrations remained unchanged.

The Mexican military, in response to a request for information in February, now says it seized 635 synthetic drug labs in 2019, 2020 and 2021, the first three years of López Obrador’s administration, compared to the 104 it had previously reported for the same period.

The military also said it seized nearly 500 labs in 2022.according to a response from the institution to a request for Reuters in January, by far, the highest annual figure of this century.

Adjusted numbers are not believablesaid two former top law enforcement officials in Mexico and the United States, as well as two Mexican security sources still in service.

“These numbers are outrageous and not worth the paper they are written on.Matthew Donahue, former regional director of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) – who previously resided in Mexico and retired from the agency last year – said when presented with the analysis of data from Reuters.

According to him, the figures were intended to “appease the United States and make it look like they’re doing something when they clearly aren’t.”.

The description of the drugs the Mexicans say they seized from the labs also raises questions about the accuracy of the data, two security sources told the agency.

In the data reviewed by Reuters, almost all raided labs are labeled as meth labs and none are labeled as fentanyl producersa synthetic opioid that is leading to a record number of overdose deaths in the United States.

The absence of searches in fentanyl laboratories is very unlikely, since for several years Mexican criminal groups have been dedicated to the mass production of the drug on national territory, according to the two security sources, a trend that has accelerated after China classified fentanyl as a controlled substance. in 2019.

In response to detailed questions from Reuters Regarding the laboratory counts reviewed, the Secretary of National Defense (Sedena) said that “he does not have information that meets your request”.

The Secretary of National Defense (Sedena) He did not respond to further questions about claims he included “inactive” labs on the seizure lists and that the figures lacked credibility.

Historically, laboratory seizures, often in hard-to-reach mountainous areas, they have been a key measure of the degree of activity of security forces in attacks against trafficking groups.

According to documents reviewed by Reuters, the data revisions took place a few weeks before López Obrador’s visit to the White House in July 2022, amid mounting US pressure for Mexico to do more to combat fentanyl production and trafficking.

During the president’s press conference on Wednesday, a video was shown saying that the current administration had secured 153% more drug labs than the previous one.

However, Mexico’s Ministry of Foreign Relations said on March 13 that national security authorities “they don’t have a fileof fentanyl production in the country, contradicting DEA claims that Mexican cartels dominate the entire global fentanyl supply chain.

On the other hand, recent seizures of fentanyl by US authorities on the southern border with Mexico have broken records year after year.

U.S. authorities intercepted 14,104 pounds (6,397 kilograms) of fentanyl in fiscal year 2022, a 33% increase from the previous year, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. .

Mexico’s Foreign Ministry responded to Reuters questions about lab seizure data by transmitting Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard’s statements on Wednesday on fentanyl trafficking, in which he said he was being pressed in pills in Mexico, but the drug itself was not manufactured. there.

Ebrard said the drug is imported into Mexico from the United States and unspecified “Asian countries”.

Relations between the United States and Mexico have been strained under President López Obrador, who has stifled security cooperation and criticized the behavior of DEA agents in his country, accusing them of trying to trample on sovereignty. from Mexico. .

DEA chief Anne Milgram told the US Congress in February that the agency was “very concerned about clandestine labs across Mexico”, adding that “virtually all” of the fentanyl seized in the US is produced there. . “INACTIVE” LABORATORIES

Although the military has published a higher number of lab seizures in recent monthly security reports, it has provided no public explanation for the changes in the data, and the inclusion of inactive labs has not been previously reported.

In addition to Donahue, the former DEA regional director, three other Mexican and foreign security sources said they doubted the veracity of the lab seizure figures.

The evolution of the data “is mocking”, said one of them, Guillermo Valdés, former director of the Center for Investigation and National Security between 2007 and 2011, when Reuters showed him the data. “It’s shameful that the military is going into this and playing with its credibility.”

Internal military documents found among millions of leaked military emails released by Guacamaya show that in June 2022, the military began including “abandoned dormant” labs in its tally of seizures.

In a draft crime statistics report attached to an email dated May 30, the military said 232 labs were seized under López Obrador (including 2019, 2020, 2021 and part of 2022 ).

A week later, in a revised version of the same report sent on June 7, the military had increased that total to 873, explaining that 232 were active labs, while the rest were “inactive abandoned facilities.”

The four active and inactive security officials Reuters spoke to said there was no obvious reason to include inactive labs, which may have been abandoned for years, on their list of seizures.

An Army dataset, provided in response to a request for information in August 2022, shows 14 lab seizures made one day in June 2022 and 12 two days later, more than the Army had handled over the whole of 2021 under the old statement. method.

The Attorney General’s Office (FGR) also records raids on labs and its figures include seizures made by other security agencies. Historically, FGR data has been slightly higher than the figures provided by the military, which is responsible for the vast majority of seizures, although they generally coincide with them.

For 2021, the FGR recorded 23 laboratory seizures, while the Army now claims to have made 217 (compared to 21 in previous data).

In 2022, the FGR reported 18 lab seizures by all security agencies, compared to 492 for the military.