The Federal Judiciary Council (CJF) and Attorney General’s Office (FGR) have opened investigations into 12 Jalisco judges for corruption and ties to organized crime.

The Financial Intelligence Unit (UIF) has already frozen the bank accounts of two of the suspects.

Among the judges under investigation is one who in April ordered the release of one of the state’s most wanted narco-traffickers. The released gangster is believed responsible for the murder of a police officer involved in his arrest.

Led by President López Obrador’s legal advisor Julio Scherer, the head of the CJF and Supreme Court president Arturo Zaldívar, the investigative unit is working in coordination with Jalisco Governor Enrique Alfaro.

Alfaro declined to comment on the investigation, but maintained that its results will be exemplary in the purge of Mexico’s judicial system, both at the state and federal levels.

“The committee already had initial results with changes to the federal judiciary branch, but I believe that in the following weeks, it will have important results in the state judiciary,” he said. “There are several cases currently under investigation, documentation is being consolidated, [and] in some cases we have already frozen accounts of some magistrates and judges.”

“It’s a program that is working well, and we hope that it can serve as a reference for other states, that they will be able to initiate purge processes in their judicial systems. In the case of Jalisco, it is an urgent matter, and although they are long and complex processes that are carefully being carried out, I believe that in the end they will yield good results.”

Alfaro is confident that the investigations will lead to the imprisonment of the corrupt judges.

“I believe that it will be highly relevant that these people that have so damaged our state with their power to impart justice will soon pay the consequences for their actions and end up in jail.”

Source: Reforma (sp)