One year ago, on September 7, 2025, Mexican authorities announced the arrest of 14 people in the first dismantling of a mafia dedicated to fuel smuggling from the United States, the first major blow against corruption in Claudia Sheinbaum’s administration, followed by other proceedings. The recent Government report of the president mentioned that from that date until June 2026, 118 criminal complaints related to fiscal fuel theft have been filed. But among the lingering doubts surrounding this inaugural case, which operated in Mexico’s maritime customs and involves high-ranking navy officers conspiring with port workers and businessmen to introduce hundreds of millions of liters of gasoline into the country without paying taxes at least since mid-2023, is the question of the political connections of this criminal group and how far the authorities are willing to go.
The elephant in the Navy Secretariat
According to the investigation by the Attorney General’s Office, the leaders of the network were the military men Fernando and Manuel Roberto Farías Laguna, nephews of Rafael Ojeda Durán, Secretary of the Navy during Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s administration (2018-2024). Since the plot was uncovered, the Government has tried to build a wall between Ojeda Durán and the Farías Laguna brothers, without much coherence between dates and facts, mainly shielding itself by saying it reported this network in 2024, but they have not shown a formal record. The brothers’ defense has repeatedly requested, without success, that Ojeda Durán appear to testify in the investigation, and a few days ago, their lawyer publicly complained that although the judge had summoned him, the Attorney General’s Office could not locate the former Secretary of the Navy. Ojeda Durán is one degree removed from the presidential power circle of the previous administration.
EL PAÍS had access to the file that led to the arrest warrant, which states that the investigation began in July 2024, with a report from the Federal Criminal Intelligence Center about “the commission of possible acts constituting crimes related to the criminal energy market in hydrocarbons.” Its target and information were not the maritime customs but the land customs of Reynosa, Matamoros, and Nuevo Laredo in Tamaulipas. The focus on maritime customs did not change until April 2025, after the seizure of a smuggling ship in the port of Tampico, in the same state, and the appearance of a strange and ephemeral video on social media.
It is known that Ojeda Durán was aware of this network at least since June 2024, when he received a handwritten letter from Fernando Rubén Guerrero Alcántar, a military member of the plot who described the entire corruption scheme. He wrote it after a meeting with Ojeda Durán, whose audio was published a few months ago by Aristegui Noticias. In the recording, the then-secretary is heard offering Guerrero Alcántar an omertà. “Either we expose all this and I don’t care who falls, because I’m not involved in this, or we try to close it here ourselves by changing this whole bunch of bastards, sending them to other places.” Guerrero Alcántar was murdered five months later, in November 2024, and the letter was not included in the file until July 2025.
Additionally, a testimony collected in February this year, precisely from another navy officer involved in the plot, points out that another leader of the plot, Miguel Ángel Solano Ruiz, a retired corvette captain nicknamed Captain Sol and one of the accused still at large, when one of the shipments was seized in Guaymas, Sonora, said he was going to call Ojeda Durán. “I sent a message to Solano telling him that this was not authorized, that it had already gotten out of control, and he told me he was going to talk to the Secretary of the Navy to say it was an Andy issue, to see if he would be listened to.”
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The mentions of Andy
Andy is, much to his dismay, the nickname of Andrés Manuel López Beltrán, one of López Obrador’s sons. This reference has been used by the opposition PAN party to accuse him of being the head of the “fiscal fuel theft” and to unsuccessfully request the Attorney General’s Office to investigate him and freeze his accounts. The PAN members have also referred to his relationship with businessman Amílcar Olán to support this theory, since Olán is accused of benefiting from his friendship with López Obrador’s sons to obtain contracts in the major projects of the previous administration. Olán is linked through his alleged front men to Portacelis Gas and Oil, a fuel importer that, according to the newspaper Reforma, tax authorities have requested to be investigated for tax fraud amounting to 834 million pesos for alleged fuel smuggling from the United States.
Furthermore, the arrest warrant contains a first reference. Among the central pieces of the investigation is the statement of the protected witness identified as Santo, a captain who participated in the plot and who, out of fear, tells everything to the authorities. Santo was in charge of the Tampico customs, which along with Altamira is the epicenter of this criminal scheme. About to leave his post, he expresses to Captain Sol part of his fear and that of his replacement. “I warned this person with his new call sign, who replied that it was political clashes between Secretary of Security Harfuch and the president’s son, but that they had already reached an agreement.” The Attorney General’s Office has said that these are not indications with the legal strength necessary to open a formal investigation.
Adán Augusto López’s supporter
This same testimony mentions that on more than a dozen occasions, ships loaded with smuggled fuel arrived at fiscal enclosure 289 of the Tampico customs, which was managed by a certain Capiterucho Pinto. When investigators ask Santo what he knows about the owner of this dock, the witness answers that he was told he “resides in Tabasco,” that he “had ties and a very good friendship with Adán Augusto López Hernández” and that he should “be careful with them because they were working with organized crime people.”
According to what was published by the portal Mexicanos Contra la Corrupción y la Impunidad, the concession of this dock was granted in 2020 to the company Tampico Terminal Marítima. This company belongs to the Tabasco businessman Saúl Vera Ochoa, who publicly supported López Hernández’s failed presidential aspirations. The current Morena senator, linked to other scandals such as the appointment of the thug Hernán Bermúdez Requena as his Secretary of Security in Tabasco or the lucrative public works contracts received by his friends, denied having friendship or business ties with this businessman.
