DEA informant: Mexico senator received $500,000 payment from Gulf Cartel

Click to read 12 things you need to know about the Gulf Cartel. less In this Friday Nov. 19, 2010 photo, initials of the Gulf Cartel (Cartel del Golfo) and a heart cover a wall at the entrance to an abandoned low-income housing complex in Ciudad Mier, Mexico. Click to read 12 ... more In this Friday Nov. 19, 2010 photo, initials of the Gulf Cartel (Cartel del Golfo) and a heart cover a wall at the entrance to an abandoned low-income housing complex in Ciudad Mier, Mexico. Photo: AP Photo: AP Image 1 of / 20 Caption Close DEA informant: Mexico senator received $500,000 payment from Gulf Cartel 1 / 20 Back to Gallery

A major Mexican newspaper has published an article accusing a local senator and gubernatorial candidate of receiving $500,000 from the Gulf Cartel to support a past mayoral bid.

Francisco Garcia Cabeza de Vaca, a senator from the Mexican state of Tamaulipas and a graduate from Houston Baptist University, allegedly received the payment from the cartel in 2004. He served as mayor for the city of Reynosa from January 2005 to December 2007. He plans to run next year for governor of Tamaulipas, which borders Texas along the Rio Grande Valley.

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An informant for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration gave testimony about the senator’s alleged cartel link in testimony in January 2012 in San Antonio. The witness’s statement leaked to the Mexico’s Reforma newspaper:

The informant assured authorities that he had been the intermediary for economy support from the drug trafficker Héctor Sauceda Gamboa, "El Caris", a high-ranking member of the Gulf Cartel, to the Reynosa campaign.



The informant Antonio Peña Argüelles said then-Tamaulipas Governor Tomas Yarrington Ruvalcaba, of the Revolutionary Institutional Party (PRI), wanted rival party candidate Garcia Cabeza de Vaca to win the mayoral race. Gamboa had the informant negotiate the cartel payment with Garcia Cabeza de Vaca, of the National Action Party , after the PRI candidate had fallen out of favor with the governor.

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Members of Los Zetas drug cartel killed Gamboa in 2009.

Garcia Cabeza de Vaca, 48, denied the allegations Thursday. According to Radio Formula, the senator said “I have never received nor had relations with criminal groups, I have confronted them and I will continue facing them now and forever.”

See the gallery above for 12 things you need to know about the Gulf Cartel.