A suspected Hungarian drug trafficker, featured on the European Union’s ‘most wanted fugitives’ list, has been arrested in Mexico, Al Jazeera reported.
On Saturday, 18 April, Mexican Security Minister Omar García Harfuch announced that 48-year-old Hungarian citizen János Balla, who goes by the alias ‘Dániel Takács’, had been detained in the southern state of Quintana Roo.
Balla has been sentenced to six years in prison for smuggling narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances within the European Union. According to García Harfuch, Balla was the subject of an Interpol red notice, which calls on law enforcement authorities worldwide to assist in the arrest of a suspect.
In a joint statement, the Mexican agencies involved in the arrest credited their collaboration with Hungarian authorities for helping to secure Balla’s detention.
‘Based on the exchange of information with Hungarian security agencies, as well as intelligence and investigative work, [Balla’s] mobility zone was identified in the municipality of Benito Juárez, where a coordinated operation was implemented, resulting in his arrest on Politécnico Avenue,’ it said.
‘Balla’s high-profile arrest is the latest in the Mexican administration’s crackdown on drug traffickers’
The statement added that Balla was placed in the custody of Mexico’s National Institute of Migration ‘in order to determine his immigration status and continue his controlled deportation process to Europe’.
Balla’s high-profile arrest is the latest in the Mexican administration’s crackdown on drug traffickers. In the wake of pressure from US President Donald Trump, President Claudia Sheinbaum has taken a harder line on combating drug trafficking and other cartel activity in Mexico.
In February, Mexican authorities killed Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, who went by the alias ‘El Mencho’, head of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), in a military operation backed by US intelligence. The killing led to what analysts describe as ‘quasi-insurrectionary retaliation’ from drug cartels: coordinated attacks across several states, dozens of deaths, including among security forces, and cartels offering rewards for killing soldiers.
Despite the killing of El Mencho, the cartel system proved resilient, with Juan Carlos Valencia González quickly emerging as his successor. Networks in Mexico and the US remained intact, and drug trafficking, money laundering, and arms flows continued largely unaffected.
János Balla is alleged to have directed an organized criminal group that trafficked cocaine and MDMA (ecstasy) in Hungary between the summer of 2014 and April 2015.
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