A Mexican federal judge ordered the release of a cartel-connected border-state former governor fighting extradition to the U.S. where he is wanted on money laundering charges.
Late last week, Mexican Federal Judge Genaro Antonio Valerio Pinillos ordered the release of former Tamaulipas Governor Eugenio Hernandez Flores. The former governor was fighting his longstanding extradition to the U.S. where he remains listed as a fugitive from justice. Hernandez had been in Mexican prisons since his arrest in Mexico in 2017 on embezzlement charges in Tamaulipas. The charges have since been suspiciously dismissed.
In the aftermath of the release, Mexico’s Attorney General’s Office took to social media to criticize Valerio Pinillos for ordering the release, claiming that Hernandez is a flight risk.
In Tamaulipas, various politicians from Hernandez’s same political party, the PRI (Partido Revolucionario Institucional), took to social media to cheer the release, claiming he was innocent. Those politicians made no mention of the pending charges in Texas.
As Breitbart Texas reported, in 2015, federal prosecutors in the Southern District of Texas obtained a criminal indictment and an arrest warrant against Hernandez. Prosecutors accused the cartel-connected politician of several money laundering charges. Some of the allegations point to Hernandez moving cartel bribes and embezzling funds to Texas and using some of those funds to purchase properties.
Breitbart Texas reported exclusively that despite being a wanted fugitive, Hernandez lived a life of luxury in Mexico, where he even had government-assigned bodyguards.
Hernandez is the second Tamaulipas governor to be criminally indicted in a Texas federal court. His predecessor Tomas Yarrington Ruvalcaba, also from the PRI, is serving a nine-year prison sentence on money laundering charges in Texas. Yarrington took a plea deal where prosecutors dismissed some of the more serious charges, including a drug trafficking conspiracy charge that claimed he worked directly with cartels after his term as governor.
Ildefonso Ortiz is an award-winning journalist with Breitbart Texas. He co-founded Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles project with Brandon Darby and senior Breitbart management. You can follow him on Twitter and on Facebook. He can be contacted at Iortiz@breitbart.com.
Brandon Darby is the managing director and editor-in-chief of Breitbart Texas. He co-founded Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles project with Ildefonso Ortiz and senior Breitbart management. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook. He can be contacted at bdarby@breitbart.com.