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Mexican AG: Drug Traffickers Corrupting Fed Agents NewsMax.com WiresMEXICO CITY - The corrupt influence of drug traffickers, long a problem in Mexico's police forces, has been spreading into the top federal investigative agency, the country's attorney general acknowledged Wednesday. "We are starting to have a problem with corruption and penetration" inside the Federal Agency of Investigation, known as the AFI, Daniel Cabeza de Vaca Cabeza told a Senate commission. Story Continues Below Cabeza de Vaca also said that more than 820 people have been killed in Mexico in recent months in drug trafficking-related incidents. AFI, which is responsible for drug-trafficking investigations, was created in 2001 partly because of rampant corruption in a predecessor operation, the Federal Judicial Police - which itself had been created several years earlier to root out corruption in a still-earlier agency. Several AFI agents have being detained on drug trafficking charges in recent years, but officials say that the agency is relatively clean. The government also depends heavily on the military to attack drug gangs. In March, prosecutors charged a former head of the AFI office in the Caribbean state of Quintana Roo with protecting drug traffickers. In recent weeks, a judge in the nearby State of Mexico has ordered the arrests of several AFI agents, one of them a high-ranking officer, accused by prosecutors of trying to extort money from a former president's brother. Cabeza de Vaca said that the AFI needs more personnel to fight federal crimes such as drug trafficking, money laundering, kidnapping and weapons cases. It has 7,000 employees, but only about 2,000 are agents operating in the field. Despite Mexico's arrests of top drug traffickers during the past five years, no area of the country is free of drug trafficking, Cabeza de Vaca said. The attorney general said the influence of the country's seven major cartels extends from the northern U.S.-Mexico border to the Pacific and Gulf coasts, as well as central and southern areas of the country.
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