Mexican President Felipe Calderon on Thursday proposed a new law to confiscate property gained through organized crime, amid escalating drug violence and a deadly grenade attack on national day celebrations this week.
“It’s clear that to stop crime, police action is not enough. It’s essential to attack the sources of its economic power, through the application of effective laws,” Calderon said in a statement.
“The aim is to convincingly hit organized crime, drug traffickers, thieves, kidnappers and, in general, anyone who commits a criminal act which deeply offends society,” he said.
Calderon said he would distribute confiscated funds in damages and assistance to crime victims.
He said he would present the law, part of a series of reforms of the penal system, to Congress.
Violence has spiked across Mexico since Calderon, who took office at the end of 2006, launched a crackdown on drug trafficking and related crime, including the deployment of more than 36,000 soldiers nationwide.
Almost 3,000 people have been killed so far this year — more than in all of last year — including a string of gruesome slayings and beheadings.
Calderon also said on Thursday that he was setting up a reward system for citizens who collaborate with authorities to help arrest criminals.
The new measures built on accords from a national security summit at the end of last month, set up in response to public anger over rising kidnappings and insecurity, he said.
Several hundred thousand people demonstrated across Mexico shortly after the summit to call for tougher measures on crime.
Seven people were killed and 108 wounded in grenade attacks on independence day celebrations late on Monday in Calderon’s home state, sparking fears that civilians were now targets in the country’s drug wars.
Authorities said that they suspected possible drug gang involvement in the independence day attacks.
Meanwhile, The Mexican army seized US$26.2 million from a house in northwestern Sinaloa state in the second largest cash haul in the country’s history, a defense ministry official said on Thursday.
The army found 890 packets of cash in a house during a routine patrol in Culiacan, the state capital, general Luis Arturo Oliver told a news conference.
Soldiers searched the house after three men fled it on seeing them approach.
More than 36,000 soldiers are deployed nationwide, including in the major drug trafficking state of Sinaloa, as part of a federal crackdown on drug trafficking and related crime.
Sinaloa is home to one of the most powerful drug cartels in Mexico, founded by fugitive leader Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman.
In the largest ever cash haul, Mexican police seized US$205 million in March last year in a Mexico City suburb.
That money belonged to a Mexican businessman of Chinese origin, Zhenli Ye Gon, who is detained in the US.
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