Mexico suspects ex-drug czar took huge bribes from traffickers

Mexican authorities have detained the country's former drug czar on suspicion that he may have accepted $450,000 a month in bribes from drug traffickers, Mexico's attorney general said Friday.
Noe Ramirez Mandujano was in charge from 2006 until this August of the attorney general's office that specializes in combatting organized crime.
Ramirez is accused of meeting with members of a drug cartel while he was in office and agreeing to provide information on investigations in exchange for the bribes, Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora Icaza said at a news conference Friday.
The arrest was part of an ongoing investigation called "Operation Limpieza," or "Operation Cleanup," the attorney general said. The operation targets officials who may have passed information to drug cartels.
The arrest was announced Thursday night, four days after the house arrest of Ricardo Gutierrez Vargas, the director for International Police Affairs at Mexico's Federal Investigative Agency and the head of Mexico's Interpol office.
Authorities say more than 30 officials have been arrested since July in connection with the anti-corruption operation.