Account Frozen in Mexico Cartel Probe

MEXICO CITY â€”  U.S. authorities have frozen $26 million in a Citibank account as part of an investigation into money-laundering allegedly carried out by the late Amado Carrillo Fuentes, a suspected Mexican drug kingpin, U.S. and Mexican officials said Friday.

It marked one of the boldest steps by officials investigating the vast empire of the alleged drug lord, who died after plastic surgery in Mexico City in July.

The New York account belongs to businessman Alejandro Ventura Cohen, whose brother, Jaime, was arrested last month with four other people by Chilean police investigating Carrillo’s operations in the South American country. However, Jaime Ventura Cohen was later released for what a judge called a lack of evidence.

But a statement Friday from the Mexican attorney general’s office said that a foreign exchange house owned by Jaime Ventura Cohen was apparently used by the alleged drug lord’s cartel to move money, and that the Citibank account apparently was used by the foreign exchange house. The U.S. attorney’s office in New York went to Citibank to freeze the $26 million as part of a federal grand jury investigation, said a Justice Department official in Washington.

The U.S. attorney’s office acted at the request of the Drug Enforcement Administration, which in turn had received information from Mexican authorities.

There was no comment Friday at Citibank in New York. However, a spokesman told the Wall Street Journal: “We believe no Citibank accounts . . . have been part of a money-laundering apparatus of the Carrillo drug cartel.�