Working off information obtained via Mexicoleaks, Proceso has revealed that federal police officers kept detailed records of Chapo’s activities throughout the Sinaloa Cartel kingpin’s truncated stay at Mexico City’s El Antiplano maximum-security prison. They monitored his frequent contact with the outside world—Chapo received guests on 386 of the 477 days he spent behind bars, including 46 conjugal visits—and the alliances he brokered with Los Zetas and other rival organizations. They warned that, through his lawyers, Chapo was maintaining control over his sprawling criminal network and attempting to gain access to blueprints to his prison.
Not only did government officials fail to intervene in his apparent scheming, but, according to Proceso, several were likely complicit in securing additional privileges for Chapo and aiding in his July escape. But the administration of Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto has resisted the persistent suspicions that the complicity extends further up the pecking order.
Anabel Hernández, a Proceso journalist, in her book Los Señores del Narco presents the entire history of Mexico’s offensive against the cartels as a pattern of intimate collusion between Chapo and the federal government. How far that corruption extends is unclear, but the deeper you dig, the darker things start looking.