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Everyone in Mexico knows about drug cartels like Sinaloa or Zetas. But we learned recently following a shootout that the Israeli mafia is also present in the country.
It was through a shootout that took place in a commercial plaza in southern Mexico City on July 24, 2019, that this new reality was discovered: a woman, who was in a restaurant, drew a revolver . She quickly approached the next table. She fired on two individuals who were in conversation. And she shot them at close range.
A former Mossad
The investigation quickly determined that the two men executed were of Israeli nationality and that they were linked to the mafia of that country. And that they had a criminal record in both Israel and Mexico. One of them was Binyamin Sutchi. Some claim it was a former member of Mossad, the Israeli secret service .
In the late nineties, he was imprisoned in his country after being involved in the murder of a local mafia boss. But in 2001, he escaped from prison and was finally arrested four years later in Mexico, from where he was extradited to Israel. Released last February, Ben Sutchi quickly returned to Mexico.
There are several tracks. For the police, it would be a settlement of accounts between criminal groups. And that, as part of a money laundering that the two Israelis carried out through ghost companies on behalf of the Mexican cartel Jalisco New Generation . It seems that they wanted to double their partners. Drug traffickers would have set a trap by giving them an appointment at a restaurant to eliminate them.
The other hypothesis is that Ben Sutchi would have come to Mexico to recover millions of euros belonging to Israeli hackers . And that he would have been shot by thugs who did not want to return the money that was in their possession.
Links between cartels and mafia groups
Already in 2000, the Mexican intelligence services had detected the presence of mafia groups that had links with drug cartels for which they laundered money and to which they provided weapons.
But there was never really any evidence, especially since the members of this mafia operated in the shadows. It is the assassination of the two Israelis that has alerted the authorities to the presence of this mafia and its links with the cartel Jalisco New Generation.
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Currently, it is the direct competitor of that of Sinaloa. In a few years, this cartel, led by a drug lord nicknamed "El Mencho", has become the most powerful and violent in Mexico. The two Israelis, if they were indeed murdered by members of this cartel, had probably forgotten who they were dealing with!