Mansion of ‘Chinese-Mexican drug trafficker’ put on the market by Mexican government
Mansion of ‘Chinese-Mexican drug trafficker’ is put on the market by Mexican government for $5m
BY BRINKWIRE ON AUGUST 6, 2019
The Mexican government plans to auction the three-story pink mansion of a Chinese-Mexican businessman facing drug trafficking and money laundering charges.
The government said Monday it will hold an August 11 auction for the Mexico City villa worth $5 million (95 million Mexican pesos) that previously belonged to the suspected drug trafficker Zhenli Ye Gon, who is accused of conspiring with the notorious Sinaloa cartel.
In July 2007, authorities seized the home after they confiscated guns and more than $205 million in cash, weighing two tonnes, hidden there.
He was suspected of importing from Asia vast quantities of pseudoephedrin, often used to produce the synthetic drug methamphetamine.
But Zhenli has responded to the 12 charges against him by claiming he imported the chemicals for use in legal prescription drugs.
The gated mansion in the upper-crust Las Lomas de Chapultepec neighborhood boasts a glass-enclosed pool, elevator and a large upstairs party room.
Authorities showed photos of the home at a press conference, including of its garden, bathrooms, Jacuzzi, spacious rooms and vast kitchen.
It has a plot of 1,218 square meters.
The proceeds from the sale will go to struggling municipalities in the country, according to the government.
It’s part of a number of auctions carried out by the government of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador with the objective of selling goods seized from organized crime to finance social programs.
Another property seized from Zhenli, in the central State of Mexico and worth around $9.5 million, was acquired in 2014 by the state government, the Latin American Herald Tribune reported.
The 2007 bust at his Mexico City mansion was considered the biggest blow in Mexico against the trafficking of methamphetamines in the country.
And the discovery of the money, almost entirely consisting of US$100 bills, along with a few pesos and Hong Kong dollars, was hailed as the biggest cash seizure in drug enforcement history.
After the raid, Zhenli fled to the US, where he was arrested and held in a Virginia jail.
In October 2016, he was extradited to Mexico on allegations of drug trafficking, after a nine-year battle against extradition while incarcerated in the US.
The former owner of now defunct Mexican pharmaceutical wholesaler Unimed Pharm Chem accused the then Secretary of Labor of forcing him to hide illegal money that allegedly belonged to the ruling National Action Party and had served to finance the electoral campaign of the President Felipe Calderon.
His attorney said his client was a legitimate businessman.
The Shanghai native became a citizen of Mexico in 2002.
SCMP reported that the 2007 raid also led to a money laundering investigation of the Las Vegas Sands Corp where Ye Gon was a high-stakes baccarat player, according to court papers.
The Sands admitted it should have recognised Ye Gon’s suspicious transactions, and paid US$47 million to the government as part of a 2013 settlement with the US Department of Justice.
Zhenli’s accounts at HSBC were also the subject of a broader US federal money laundering investigation of the bank, and in 2012, HSBC agreed to a US$1.9 billion settlement with US authorities after admitting that its poor controls had allowed drug cartels to launder at least US$881 million.
Ricardo Rodriguez, head of Mexico’s property administration and disposal service, told the Latin American Herald Tribune that the government had raised around $540,000 in the recent auction of jewels seized from drug trafficking, which had 70 participants.
The item with the highest starting price of $155,050, a Piaget men’s watch in 18K white gold with 49 diamonds, was declared void because there were no bidders, the outlet reported.
Rodriguez added that the proceeds will go towards repairing rural roads in the Sierra de Michoacan region.
On February 24, the government auctioned vehicles, armored vans and motorcycles, many of them belonging to the Presidential General Staff, a protection body dissolved by the president.
On May 26, there was an auction of luxury cars, and on June 23, a sale of real estate seized from drug trafficking.
In a 2012 account of touring Zhenli’s mansion, a New York Times reporter described ‘three child-size toothbrushes in one of the bathrooms’.
‘For me, these tiny toothbrushes were haunting — the kind of detail that lingered, because it revealed what I saw in so many of these homes: a combination of not just excess and risk, but also family life,’ the reporter wrote.
He also said there was a school photo of the boy’swept up in a pile with a velvet Fabergé case, a DVD of a movie titled “The Corruptor” and a syringe’.
The reporter said he saw ‘baroque tables mingled with minimalist leather couches, Oriental rugs and a knockoff of Picasso’s “Guernica”‘.
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