Report reveals Los Zetas control of Moreira brothers’ governments in Coahuila

By Juan Alberto Cedillo

SALTILLO, Coa.- While Rubén Moreira offered his last government report in which he boasted that "the big bosses that ravaged Coahuila are no longer" and that peace and tranquility returned to the state, the University of Texas, in Austin, United States, made public a study that reveals that the Zetas gave million dollar bribes to the Moreira brothers' governments.

The study, titled "Control over the entire state of Coahuila: An analysis of testimony in trials against Zeta members in San Antonio, Austin and Del Rio," was previously presented to the Human Rights Commission of the US House of Representatives.

The report collects the testimonies given by the Zetas kingpins Enrique Rejón Aguilar, Efrén Tavira, Alfonso Cuéllar, Héctor Moreno and Humberto Uribe Tapia, among others, who confess to the bribes they paid to the Humberto and Rubén Moreira governments.

"In 2011, Rubén Moreira, the brother of Humberto Moreira, became the new governor of Coahuila. According to Tavira, Rubén Moreira also collaborated with the Zetas," he says.

And it continues: "Tavira described an occasion in which the Zetas delivered a payment to Rubén Moreira at the ranch of another drug trafficker, Beto Casas, through a Suburban truck full of suitcases full of money".

Uribe Tapia also counted the bribes of The Zetas sent to Humberto Moreira:

"It was done through Mr. Vicente Chaires and Jesús Torres Charles. And what they did there in Saltillo, they bribed the Attorney General of the Public Prosecutor's Office and that was for protection and the agreement they had reached with Mr. Humberto Moreira, who was the governor of Coahuila at the time. "

Piedras Negras boss Alfonso Poncho Cuéllar testified that Zetas leaders gave money from 2009 to all the Coahuila state, federal and municipal authorities.

"They paid their fees to be able to move their drugs freely and not have any problem getting the drugs through Coahuila, reaching Piedras Negras, and being able to pass them to the other side and work without having any problem and without being covered”, Cuellar said in a trial held in Austin.