MATAMOROS, Tamaulipas — The cold case of two architects apparently killed over the bidding process to build the new U.S. Consular Offices in this border city appears to be the latest example of how the law enforcement system in Tamaulipas will not investigate politically charged crimes.
June, the Texas border city of Brownsville and its counterpart to the south Matamoros held protests and cried out for help following the kidnapping of Fernando Lugo Nieto and his business partner Arnoldo Cañamar.
At the time law enforcement officials in Tamaulipas had confirmed that relatives of Lugo had paid a ransom demand of $50,000 hoping to rescue him, however that was not the case.
Their bodies were found just days later leading to a peaceful protest in Matamoros where residents wore all white and held up placards with Lugo’s picture and a message in Spanish saying “What did I do?”
Since then, the Tamaulipas Attorney General’s Office which is the agency tasked with investigating violent crimes has not made any inroads in the case.
A group of whistleblowers with direct knowledge of the case spoke with Breitbart Texas claiming that the case had unofficially been closed in a term commonly referred to as “carpetazo” or closing the binder where the case sits in limbo indefinitely.
“This is not a regular kidnapping like the ones we see in Matamoros every other day,” the official said in Spanish. “There are some powerful individuals involved so the case was meant to go away. He [Lugo] had been told to not get into that project.”
The sources confirmed to Breitbart Texas that Lugo and his business partner had been bidding on the massive project to build the new state of the art U.S. Consulate offices in Matamoros; however a rival business man wanted the project. The construction was set to take place not far from the Rio Grande in a lot that used to house a historic hotel that has since been torn down. In the six months since the murder, the place remains a vacant lot.
The businessman who is from Matamoros but lives in Brownsville has high level connections with the Tamaulipas government and with organized crime, one of the whistleblowers said. That individual was the prime suspect who masterminded the crime and had contracted out the hit to organized crime members in Reynosa.
Follow Ildefonso Ortiz on Twitter @ildefonsoortiz
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