Mexico's army seized nearly $15.4 million from the organization of the country's most powerful drug lord, Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman, officials said Tuesday, marking a rare financial blow to cartels.
The seizure was revealed the same day U.S. border police revealed the third discovery in a week of drug-smuggling tunnel under the border with Mexico.
In Mexico, the military said it found the cash was found in a vehicle on Nov. 18 in the northern border city of Tijuana and that it was linked to Guzman's operations.
The haul marked the second-largest cash seizure by the military since President Felipe Calderon sent the country's armed forces out to battle drug cartels in 2006, the statement said. Some $26 million was captured in September 2008 in Culiacan, the capital of Guzman's home state of Sinaloa.
About 45,000 people have died in the conflict in the last five years and the government has captured or killed dozens of top level drug smugglers.
But critics complain the government has barely dented cartel finances. Total seizures add up to only a tiny fraction of the $18 billion to $39 billion in estimated annual revenue generated by Mexican and Colombian drug traffickers.
Mexico's biggest cash seizure to date was made by the attorney general's office when officials found more than $200 million stuffed in the walls of a Mexico City mansion in 2007, which at the time was the world's biggest ever seizure of drug money.
Guzman, Mexico's most wanted man, runs an empire of methamphetamine, marijuana and cocaine smuggling that has earned him a spot on Forbes magazine's list of billionaires.
Tunnel in Arizona
In Nogales, Ariz., the U.S. Border Patrol said a 319-foot long tunnel was discovered on Monday. It measured 3-feet wide by 2-feet tall, and ran for 100 feet into Mexico at a depth of about 20 feet.
It was chiseled through solid rock and was equipped with electricity, lighting and water pumps, and it was held up by support beams and plywood shoring, the Border Patrol's Tucson sector said in a news release.
While securing the tunnel, agents also found 26 bundles of marijuana weighing more than 430 pounds. One suspect was arrested by authorities in Mexico, Border Patrol agent Colleen Agle said.
The tunnel was the third discovered running under the porous U.S.-Mexico border in less than a week, and the 21st illicit passageway found beneath the streets of Nogales in the past two years.
Last Wednesday Authorities in California announced the find of an underground passageway that stretched 400 yards to an industrial park south of San Diego from Tijuana, Mexico. They seized more than 17 tons of marijuana and arrested two men.
The same day, authorities in Nogales found another smaller passageway beneath the porch of a house that ran 70 feet from a drain in Nogales in Mexico.
Agle said Mexican smugglers are increasingly turning to tunneling in a bid to beat beefed-up border security in the city, where a tall, new steel border fence was completed earlier this year.
"As we have been putting more resources along the border in this area, we are really taking away a lot of the traditional avenues for smuggling contraband and illegal aliens," Agle told Reuters.
She added that the majority of illicit passageways found under the city keyed into the extensive storm drain system that runs under the two Nogales, and contributes to making them such a hotspot for tunnelers.
