Mexican Official Arrested Near Texas Border

Mexican authorities have arrested the Social Development Secretary for the Mexican border city of Matamoros on apparent tax evasion charges.

On Saturday afternoon, agents with Mexico’s Attorney General’s Office arrested Luis Alfredo Biasi in Matamoros and are expected to move him to Mexico City for questioning, Mexico’s Milenio newspaper reported.

The arrest appears to be connected to a liquor filled warehouse that was seized earlier this year by the Mexican military as part of an investigation into liquor and tobacco smuggling.

The charges against Biasi come from Mexican authorities which is a rare sight in Mexico since the most recent corruption scandals in that country have been the result of investigations carried out by U.S. law enforcement. It remains unclear if Biasi’s affiliation to the Partido Accion Nacional—PAN, an opposition party played a role in Mexican authorities going after him.

As previously reported by Breitbart Texas, just days before Biasi’s arrest, U.S. prosecutors filed a civil action against Homero De La Garza Tamez, a Tamaulipas official and gubernatorial hopeful for the Partido Revolucionario Institucional –PRI which is Mexico’s ruling party.  The civil action sought to seize more than $1 million in bribe money that De La Garza is believed to have placed in U.S. bank accounts.

Just last month, U.S. federal agents obtained an arrest warrant for former Matamoros Mayor Erick Silva Santos, who has been criminally charged with money laundering for moving bribe money into U.S. and Caribbean bank accounts as well as purchasing property in the U.S. with bribe money.

In October Breitbart Texas reported that former Tamaulipas governor Eugenio Hernandez Flores had been accused of laundering drug money through is brother in law. Breitbart also reported that the governor before Hernandez, Tomas Yarrington is currently a fugitive accused of working for the Los Zetas cartel.