HOUSTON - The former Mexican deputy attorney general Mr Mario Ruiz Massieu is to appear in a US District Court in Houston, Texas, today to face allegations that he lodged millions of dollars in payments from drug traffickers in a Texas bank.
While working as Mexico's principal drug fighter in the early 1990s, Mr Ruiz Massieu allegedly received more than $9 million in drug proceeds in return for protecting traffickers and the massive shipments of cocaine they smuggled across the US Mexico border, prosecutors said.
Mr Ruiz Massieu, who fled Mexico in 1995 in the face of narcotics related corruption charges, has contested the government's right to seize the money in the civil forfeiture case.
