[NYTr] Mexico denies drug suspect's allegations
 
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2007 00:08:23 -0500 (CDT)


Via NY Transfer News Collective  *  All the News that Doesn't Fit
 
sent by Milt Shapiro (mexnews)

AP - Jul 2, 2007

Mexico denies drug suspect's allegations

By MARK STEVENSON and MICHAEL RUBINKAM
Associated Press Writers

It was the largest seizure of cash in the history of drug 
enforcement: $207 million, mostly in crisp $100 bills, stuffed into 
walls, closets and suitcases in the Mexico City home of a 
Chinese-born businessman.

Zhenli Ye Gon told The Associated Press that most of the money 
belonged to Mexico's ruling party. He said party officials delivered 
it last summer in duffel bags stuffed with $5 million apiece and 
threatened to kill him unless he guarded their cash.

In a statement Sunday night, the Mexican government called his tale 
"a perverse blackmail attempt" aimed at getting himself off on drug, 
weapons and money-laundering charges and at blunting President Felipe 
Calderon's war on drugs, which has mobilized the army and extradited 
a record number of top-level traffickers.

The government says Ye Gon made millions supplying traffickers with 
the raw material to make a pure, highly addictive form of 
methamphetamine that has flooded U.S. markets, and said his story "is 
not only false, it is ridiculous."

The statement from the attorney general's office, which was a 
response to a letter sent by Zhenli's U.S. lawyer to the Mexican 
Embassy in Washington, said the lawyer demanded special treatment for 
Ye Gon and suggested he would go public with his accusations against 
the National Action Party.

"These lawyers are unscrupulously and uselessly seeking to blackmail 
the Mexican government with absurd and unbelievable accusations, in 
an attempt to discourage the government from bringing all the weight 
of the law to bear against Mr. Zhenli Ye Gon," it said.

Eleven people, including several of Ye Gon's relatives, have been 
charged with drug trafficking and organized crime in Mexico.

Ye Gon met with the AP recently at his lawyer's New York office. The 
44-year-old calmly recounted his version of events, complete with 
mysterious guards and blood-chilling threats. Most of his story about 
his alleged relationship with the ruling party hinges on claims that 
are hard to prove.

Ye Gon said he had no prior relationship with the National Action 
Party and has no idea why he was chosen to hold the cash. And the 
name he gave as his main campaign contact doesn't match that of 
anyone who worked on Calderon's national campaign team.

Born in Shanghai, Ye Gon migrated to Mexico in 1990 and became a 
citizen in 2002. He imported textiles, clothing and shoes, and made a 
fortune as a reseller of commodities seized by Mexican customs.

He founded a pharmaceutical company, Unimed, in 1997. He said he 
became one of the nation's largest importers of pseudoephedrine, an 
ingredient in cold medicines that is also used to make 
methamphetamine. After 2004, however, Ye Gon said he stopped 
importing pseudoephedrine because of the controls placed on the 
chemical by the Mexican government.

He said he has never sold illegal drugs and doesn't even know what 
meth looks like.

Mexico says otherwise. Agents intercepted a ship from China last year 
that purportedly carried more than 19 tons of pseudoephedrine 
acetate, all of it illegally imported by Ye Gon, according to the 
government. Officials say he was building a massive factory in Mexico 
to process the component into a form usable to traffickers. Mexican 
labs already supply about 80 percent of the meth in the U.S. market.

Ye Gon said the substance on the ship was another, proprietary 
chemical used in cold medicines, and that Mexican officials botched 
the laboratory analysis. He supplied AP with reports from two 
American chemists, including a former official with the U.S. Drug 
Enforcement Administration, who said the testing procedures were 
severely flawed.

What isn't in dispute about Ye Gon is that he lived the life of a high
roller.

The married Ye Gon squired his mistress around in a Lamborghini. 
During frequent trips to Las Vegas, he said he bet $150,000 a hand in 
baccarat, his favorite game. He was such a treasured customer that 
one of his favorite haunts, The Venetian Resort Hotel Casino, gave 
him a Rolls-Royce.

And no wonder: Between 1997 and 2006, Ye Gon lost nearly $41 million 
while gambling in the U.S., according to a police affidavit filed in 
Las Vegas.

Ye Gon's high-rolling ways have been curtailed dramatically since the 
raid on his home. He said all of his bank accounts, including those 
in Hong Kong and the U.S., are frozen. He is staying with a friend in 
the United States but wouldn't say where.

"I don't want to live like that," he said. "I want to make things 
clear as soon as possible. If the DEA tomorrow asks me, I will go 
with them, cooperate with them, or FBI, or CIA. I'd like to talk with 
them."
       
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