Close to the leadership of Mexico’s hyper-violent Jalisco New Generation cartel is a man known as “The Tank” who leads its fuel theft arm, supplying it with tens of millions of dollars a year by selling stolen gasoline through a network of seemingly legitimate businesses, according to the U.S. Treasury.
Ivan Cazarin Molina gets his nickname not from the battlefield vehicle but rather the massive storage tanks he manages in Mexico’s Gulf coast state of Veracruz.
Cazarin Molina was among nine Mexicans and 26 Mexico-based entities sanctioned Tuesday by Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control for their alleged role in fueling the cartel’s illicit activities.
Fuel theft has been a major problem for Mexico’s government and state-owned petroleum company Pemex, costing it billions of dollars.
Organized criminal groups illegally tap pipelines, hijack tanker trucks or steal directly from refineries. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador put the army in charge of stopping it at the beginning of his term.
Mexico’s cartels have been known …