Comment on Ex-accountant for cartel tells of money laundering

Ex-accountant for cartel tells of money laundering Express-News Copyright 2013 Express-News. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Updated 10:31 pm, Thursday, April 18, 2013 AUSTIN — A former accountant for Mexico's Gulf Cartel described to jurors here Thursday how the gang swept along the Texas-Mexico border in the early 2000s, buying off police and using its enforcers, the Zetas, to sow terror among rivals. The former accountant, Jose Carlos Hinojosa, 35, also told jurors that Francisco Colorado Cessa, one of the five men on trial for alleged money laundering, was in bed with the Zetas and used them to grow his business. Colorado Cessa, now a businessman with contracts with the Mexican state-owned oil company Pemex, got his start on a loan from a founding member of the Zetas, who at the time were the Gulf Cartel's paramilitary wing, Hinojosa testified. Colorado Cessa; José Treviño Morales, the brother of Zetas leader Miguel Treviño Morales; Fernando Solis Garcia, a Rio Grande Valley-born quarter horse expert; Jesus Maldonado Huitron, an Austin-area home builder, and his brother Eusevio Maldonado Huitron, a sought-after horse trainer, are all on trial this week on a charge of conspiring to launder money. Prosecutors say the men laundered the Zetas' drug money through the U.S.