Mexican authorities said on Sunday that they had arrested more than a dozen members of an alleged drug-trafficking ring in an upscale neighborhood of this capital city, seizing weapons, vehicles — and lions.
Eleven Colombians, an American, two Mexicans and a Uruguayan were detained during a raid in a sprawling mansion in Desierto de los Leones on Saturday, Marisela Morales, a organized-crime prosecutor, told a news conference.
Morales identified the leader as Teodoro Fino Restrepo, who allegedly arranged for sea-borne cocaine shipments from Colombia to Mexico’s Beltran Leyva cartel.
Also detained in the police raid was American Raul Munoz Montalvo, of Texas. Police did not release the name of his hometown, and no one from the US embassy in Mexico was available to comment.
All the suspects are being held on suspicion of drug trafficking, money laundering and organized-crime activities, Morales said.
Nine Mexicans working as waiters and disk jockeys were briefly held and released.
Authorities had been investigating the group since 2005, the prosecutor said.
“This is important, because it breaks a logistic link in the chain that supplies Mexican cartels with cocaine,” Morales said.
The mansion, whose walls, ceilings and furniture are made almost entirely of ornately carved wood, appeared to have been used by the traffickers for parties on nights and weekends, authorities said.
Those who received invitations were picked up at nearby shopping-center parking lots in vehicles with blacked-out windows to prevent them from seeing where they were going.
The mansion was equipped with a private zoo housing a collection of animals including two tigers and two lions. Police turned the exotic animals over to prosecutors. It was unclear what they planned to do with them.
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