Report: Mexican Border Governor’s Bodyguard Behind Kidnapping

A Mexican businessman who was the victim for a ransom kidnapping is claiming that his captors were all part of a special police security detail that protects a border state governor.

The kidnapping took place in January 2016 when Agustin Villarreal Budnink, the general manager of a brick making company was pulled over by two SUVs with police officers, Mexico’s Proceso Magazine reported in a story by Juan Alberto Cedillo.

A team of eight police officers identified themselves as state ministerial officers and asked if he was indeed Agustin Villarreal. When the businessman said he was, the cops told him that they had a warrant for his arrest and needed him to go to headquarters to make a statement. Once the businessman agreed to go with them, the police officers began to beat him with their rifles and took him to a stash house where he was held for several days.

One of the police officers called Villarreal’s family and demanded they pay a ransom of $20 million in U.S. Dollars. As an act of good faith, the cop demanded that the family pay them a deposit of $15 million Pesos (approximately $750,000 USD).

The police officer who made the phone call was identified through voice analysis as Javier Alejandro Rodriguez, a state cop who was gunned down in May along with Arturo Valle Novelo, the head of the State Intelligence Investigations Agency. As Breitbart Texas reported, Novelo and Rodriguez were killed under orders of Beltran Leyva Cartel regional boss Eleazar “El Cochi, Comandante 19” Palomo Castillo in the ritzy suburb of San Pedro over a bribe dispute.

According to Proceso, Nuevo Leon’s Governor Jaime “El Bronco” Rodriguez Calderon tried to minimize the kidnapping, calling it a family dispute following the theory that Villarreal’s relatives may have been the organizers of the crime.

Ildefonso Ortiz is an award-winning journalist with Breitbart Texas. He co-founded the Cartel Chronicles project with Brandon Darby and Stephen K. Bannon.  You can follow him on Twitter and on Facebook.

Brandon Darby is managing director and editor-in-chief of Breitbart Texas. He co-founded the Cartel Chronicles project with Ildefonso Ortiz and Stephen K. Bannon. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook. He can be contacted at bdarby@breitbart.com.

Tony Aranda from the Cartel Chronicles project contributed to this report.