FGR Official Arrested in Miss Universe Owner Bribery Case

Raúl Rocha Cantú, the owner of the Miss Universe pageant and accused by the FGR of drug trafficking, arms trafficking, and fuel theft, bribed a high-ranking official of that agency to obtain information on the investigation against him.

The prosecutor who accepted the bribe and assisted Rocha was Mari Carmen Ramírez Rodríguez, according to the official accusation.

She sold information for up to two million pesos regarding investigations into fuel theft to the criminal group headed by Rocha Cantú and his associate Jacobo Reyes León, known as “El Yaicob”.

Ramírez Rodríguez was detained on November 18 and is charged with organized crime involving drug trafficking, firearms trafficking, and fuel theft.

She was formally charged yesterday and is imprisoned in the women’s prison in Morelos.

According to the investigation, federal agents recorded Prosecutor Ramírez getting into Jacobo Reyes’ vehicle, apparently to receive a bribe.

The evidence was strengthened with intercepted phone calls, under judicial order, from Reyes, revealing that they held a meeting at a restaurant in Polanco.

Jacobo Reyes was a dance promoter, police chief in municipalities of the State of Mexico, ran a police training center, and in 2021 was a PRD candidate for mayor of San Martín de las Pirámides.

Reyes acted as an intermediary for Rocha in criminal operations, according to the criminal investigation.

Until last week, Mari Carmen Ramírez was assigned to the Special Prosecutor’s Office for Investigation of Hydrocarbon Crimes within the Specialized Prosecutor’s Office for Organized Crime (FEMDO), as a public prosecutor agent.

On December 17, 2024, the FGR intercepted a phone call in which Reyes tells his wife that he is going to FEMDO to pay “that woman (the public prosecutor), to give her the copies and that he will see her outside the offices to hand over the money and she will give him the copies.”

He says that Raúl Rocha Cantú “has him on edge with this issue, as he is going to invest 400,000 of his own money now, and he charged Raúl 2 million, which is why he is agitated about this.”

Thanks to this conversation, federal agents set up undercover surveillance around FEMDO, at Reforma 75, and on the same date managed to see a Ford Raptor truck, orange in color, driven by Jacobo Reyes on Mina Street.

Ramírez Rodríguez had been working at the FGR for 14 years.

Before joining, she had no experience related to justice administration, having worked as a store clerk, cashier at a pharmacy, and assistant in a dental office.