LOS ANGELES — A Mexican federal judge has been arrested in Colombia and charged with accepting a $2-million cash bribe to free the alleged second-in-command of former Canadian Olympic snowboarder Ryan Wedding’s international cocaine organization, an operation run under the umbrella of Sinaloa Cartel resources and protection, according to The Bureau’s analysis of the case and its alleged tentacles into Canada.
The explosive new allegations, laid out in a highly redacted document that names two other defendants whose identities are concealed, expose what American prosecutors allege was judicial corruption at the heart of one of the largest narcotics-trafficking networks supplying Canada.
Luis Benítez Alcántara, 49, a district judge in Mexico City whom a federal grand jury identifies by the alias “The Judge,” was arrested Sunday in Colombia. A second superseding indictment filed September 4 in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California accuses him of using his office to free Andrew Clark, a Canadian from Wasaga Beach, Ontario, who faces American charges of cocaine trafficking, murder and attempted murder.
The indictment describes Clark as “the second-in-command of a billion-dollar transnational criminal organization that was the largest supplier of cocaine to Canada and operated in other countries, including, but not limited to, Colombia, Mexico, and the United States.” American prosecutors allege Wedding led that organization.
Clark’s lawyer, Matthew Lombard, did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Associated Press.
Los Angeles Magazine reported Thursday, without naming a source, that Clark is cooperating with the FBI. The alleged judicial payoffs overlapped with the killing of a U.S. government witness at the center of the FBI’s case.