When Nayarit State Prosecutor Édgar Veytia was arrested in the express lane of the San Ysidro-Tijuana border crossing by U.S. Control Border Protection authorities onMarch 28, the charges against him were really mild compared to what’s come up after his downfall.
According to the U.S. Eastern District Court of New York, Veytia is charged with introducing into the United states “at least” one kilo of heroin, five kilos of cocaine, 500 grams of methamphetamine and one ton of marijuana. He will be tried as a U.S. citizen as he holds dual a citizenship.
In his native state of Nayarit, sources claim Veytia had turned the tiny Pacific Coast region into a fiefdom of terror. He seemingly made good to the nickname people had tagged him with: he was known as “El Diablo.”
Throngs of people are nowadays denouncing his arbitrary abuses. Accusers range from farmers, politicians, businessmen, entrepreneurs, drivers and even relatives of current Nayarit Gov. Roberto Sandoval Castañeda accuse “El Diablo” Veytia from cattle rustling and land theft to homicides, kidnapping and extortion , just to name a few of the charges he will go unpunished for in Mexico.
Furthermore, there is no doubt that the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) was following his footprints from Tijuana to Nayarit’s capital Tepic, from where he ran a ring of protection to several criminal organizations including the gory Jalisco New Generation cartel, and was well acquainted with notorious drug traffickers the Beltrán Leyva brothers.
Veytia spent time in Los Angeles and San Diego (where he had a house) and was well acquainted with Tijuana, but apparently he did not start his criminal career until he returned to Tepic in the 1990’s. A career forensics lawyer from the State University of Nayarit, he returned to Tepic in the mid-1990s broke. He then began making a living buying second hand tools in San Diego and selling them in Tepic.
His luck is said to have changed in 1999 when his father in law, a bus owner in the township of Compostela (on the road from Tepic to Puerto Vallarta) gave him a bus and a permit to bus people from Tepic to Compostela. He invested the earnings to buy a second bus.
He later started buying and selling gold as well as installing public gaming machines. The increased his number of buses until he formed a line operating the Tepic-Compostela route as well as public buses in Puerto Vallarta.
A person helping him all along was Gov. Roberto Sandoval, who was even the god father of Veytia’s daughter when she turned 15 years old. Automatically, Sandoval and him became “compadres.”
When Sandoval was elected mayor of Tepic in 2009, he appointed Veytia as the Traffic Commissioner and later police chief. Three years later, when Sandoval won the election for governor, Veytia became Assistant Prosecutor, from where he moved up.
The rest is now a somber history for many people in the state of Nayarit in which power abuse was his signature.
Nowadays throngs of his victims are demanding a deep investigation of all of “El Diablo’s” criminal activities as they claim that in the state of Nayarit everyone knew what was going on, except for Gov. Roberto Sandoval, who had to confront the press at a conference when he announced that Prosecutor Édgar Veytia had been busted by the DEA.
Needless to say that Sandoval made the announcement and did not answer questions. Even today he claims not to have been aware of what his “compadre” had been doing, even if Veytia made him a present of a 300 hectare ranch and a one million dollar worth Spanish horse Gov. Sandoval loves to ride and show off.
Veytia’s arrest is still sending ripples all the way up to the federal government as just this week a federal police officer turned himself in to U.S. authorities as apparently Veytia pointed at him as a key link with organized drug traffickers.
There’s a lot more on Veytia but the tip of the iceberg should give you a hint as to why organized criminal gangs are thriving in Mexico.
