A Mexican judge has been arrested and accused of accepting $2 million in bribes in exchange for releasing a suspected Canadian drug trafficker from custody, U.S. officials said Thursday.<\/p>\n
Luiz Ben\u00edtez Alc\u00e1ntara was overseeing extradition proceedings in Mexico in 2024 for Canadian citizen Andrew Clark, who was charged in the U.S. with helping to run a billion-dollar drug trafficking group allegedly headed by former Canadian Olympic snowboarder Ryan Wedding, the Justice Department said in a statement. Ben\u00edtez is accused of releasing Clark from custody after accepting the bribe payments, according to the statement. <\/p>\n
Clark was arrested days after his release and removed to the United States, where he faces drug trafficking and murder charges. <\/p>\n
The statement said Ben\u00edtez, 49, was arrested Sunday in Colombia. He is charged in a nine-count indictment with being an accessory after the fact. It was not immediately known whether he has a lawyer.<\/p>\n
U.S. officials will request Ben\u00edtez\u2019s extradition from Colombia, the statement said.<\/p>\n
\u201cCrooked public officials, no matter where they are, who assist drug traffickers operating here at home will face justice in the United States,\u201d U.S. Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche said in the statement. <\/p>\n
It\u2019s the latest arrest in the U.S. investigation into a multinational drug trafficking network allegedly run by Wedding, who became a top FBI fugitive accused of moving cocaine from Latin America into the United States and orchestrating several killings. Wedding was arrested in Mexico this year and flown to California, where he pleaded not guilty to murder and drug charges.<\/p>\n
Dozens of people have been arrested in connection with the alleged drug network and authorities seized large amounts of drugs, weapons and cash, as well as millions of dollars worth of automobiles, motorcycles, artwork and jewelry in its investigation.<\/p>\n
Clark\u2019s attorney, Matthew Lombard, did not immediately respond to messages Thursday. <\/p>\n
Taxin writes for the Associated Press. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Mexican judge has been arrested and accused of accepting $2 million in bribes in exchange for releasing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":907348,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,241186,379484,48864,27459,40841,379482,379483,26,176252,6779,3,16329,16597,87703,21,19,22,20,25,24,71120],"class_list":["post-907347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-benitez","tag-billion-dollar-drug-trafficking-group","tag-clark","tag-colombia","tag-custody","tag-drug-charge","tag-extradition-proceeding","tag-mexico","tag-murder-charge","tag-network","tag-news","tag-statement","tag-thursday","tag-u-s-official","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa","tag-wedding"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/907347","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=907347"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/907347\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/907348"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=907347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=907347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=907347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}