The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) reportedly quietly booted former high official in Mexico over alleged ties to Miami-based protection attorneys representing accused narcotraffickers. 

Nicholas Palmeri served only a 14-month stint because the DEA’s Regional Director of North and Central Americas Area, based in Mexico City. He was abruptly transferred to Washington headquarters in Might 2021 earlier than he was pressured to retire final March from the federal company the place he labored for over twenty years. 

The Related Press, citing confidential data, reported Friday that Palmeri’s socializing and vacationing with Miami drug attorneys introduced his final downfall. 

In accordance with the AP, inner investigative data present Miami protection legal professional David Macey hosted Palmeri and his Mexican-born spouse for 2 days at his residence within the Florida Keys — a visit that investigators stated served no helpful work function and violated guidelines governing interactions with attorneys which can be designed to keep away from even the looks of impropriety.

MEXICO CONFIRMS US CITIZEN AMONG 4 KILLED IN ZACATECAS 

A photograph posted on Twitter by the DEA’s New York division on Aug 30, 2019 exhibits Nicholas Palmeri. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration quietly eliminated Palmeri, its high official in Mexico, in 2022 over improper contact with attorneys for narcotraffickers, an embarrassing finish to a short tenure marked by deteriorating cooperation between the nations and a file movement of cocaine, heroin and fentanyl throughout the border. 
(DEA by way of AP)

Palmeri’s case provides to a rising litany of misconduct roiling the nation’s premier narcotics legislation enforcement company at a time when its sprawling overseas operations — spanning 69 nations — are underneath scrutiny from an exterior evaluation ordered by DEA Administrator Anne Milgram.

That evaluation got here in response to the case of Jose Irizarry, a disgraced former agent now serving a 12-year federal jail sentence after confessing to laundering cash for Colombian drug cartels and skimming hundreds of thousands from seizures to fund a global joyride of jet-setting, events and prostitutes.

Palmeri’s is the second case in latest months to shine a light-weight on the often-cozy interactions between DEA officers and Miami attorneys representing a few of Latin America’s largest narcotraffickers and cash launderers. 

Final 12 months, federal prosecutors charged a DEA agent and a former supervisor with leaking confidential legislation enforcement data to 2 unnamed Miami protection attorneys in trade for $70,000 in money. Present and former U.S. officers recognized a type of attorneys as Macey, the AP reported.

Palmeri, 52, acknowledged to investigators that he stayed at Macey’s getaway residence, that his spouse labored as a translator for one more outstanding legal professional, Ruben Oliva, and that he took an unauthorized journey to Miami along with his spouse in February 2021. The purported function of the Miami journey had been to “debrief” a confidential supply. But it surely happened at a non-public residence the place Palmeri confirmed up along with his spouse — and a bottle of wine, in accordance with the inner report.

Drug Enforcement Administration Administrator Anne Milgram, speaks throughout a information on the Division of Justice in Washington, Tuesday, Oct. 26, 2021. 
(AP Picture/Manuel Balce Ceneta, File)

“The assembly had the looks of a social interplay with a confidential supply,” the investigators wrote, “and there was no contemporaneous official DEA documentation regarding the substance of the debrief, each of which violate DEA coverage.”

Palmeri informed investigators he had proven “not one of the best judgment” and was transferred to DC. 

In accordance with the AP, separate inner probes raised different purple flags, together with complaints of lax dealing with of the coronavirus pandemic that resulted in two sickened brokers having to be airlifted in a foreign country. And one other disclosed final week discovered Palmeri permitted using drug-fighting funds for inappropriate functions and sought to be reimbursed to pay for his personal party.

This March 2020 photograph offered by the U.S. Border Patrol exhibits medicine seized from a tunnel underneath the Otay Mesa space of San Diego, Calif. 
( U.S. Border Patrol by way of AP)

Shortly after his arrival in Mexico in 2020, the AP reported that some brokers complained about his near-obsession with capturing Rafael Caro Quintero, the notorious drug lord behind the killing of a U.S. DEA agent in 1985, saying Palmeri prioritized that over the company’s less-flashy efforts to stem the movement of Chinese language precursor chemical substances used to make fentanyl. Quintero was lastly taken into custody final summer time, months after the DEA recalled Palmeri to Washington.

“The DEA holds its 10,000 staff to the best requirements of conduct and professionalism,” a DEA spokesperson stated in an electronic mail to Fox Information Digital Sunday, with out offering specifics about Palmeri’s departure. “When an worker is discovered to haven’t lived as much as these requirements, DEA takes decisive motion, together with elimination from the company.”

In an electronic mail to the AP, Palmeri described the misconduct probes as a “witch hunt” prompted by private {and professional} jealousies and “an ill-conceived narrative to take away me from my place.”

This undated photograph offered on Jan. 24, 2020 by U.S. Customs and Border Safety exhibits a few of greater than 165 kilos of suspected methamphetamine seized after smugglers tried to drift it throughout the border from Nogales, Mexico, by roping collectively dozens of packages and sending them by way of an underground drainage tunnel into Arizona, in accordance with federal officers. 
( U.S. Customs and Border Safety by way of AP, File)

Palmeri added that his relationships with attorneys have “at all times been skilled and moral,” and that every one his expenditures in Mexico had been “considered” and benefited the U.S. authorities.

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“It’s ironic,” Palmeri wrote in an electronic mail, “that the Division of ‘Justice’ would commit this injustice to the nation.”

Fox Information Digital additionally reached out to Palmeri on LinkedIn however didn’t instantly hear again. 

Oliva informed AP the interpretation work Palmeri’s spouse did for him was “completely unrelated” to Palmeri and that he is “by no means met a extra moral, hard-working and extremely efficient drug enforcement agent.”

The Related Press contributed to this report.