New testimony in the investigation into the tax evasion network within the Ministry of the Navy indicates that one of its heads sought the support of Rafael Ojeda Durán, Secretary of the Navy during López Obrador’s six-year term, to authorize a ship with smuggled fuel.
After the seizure of the Challenge Procyon ship in March 2025 in Tampico, Miguel Ángel Solano Ruiz, alias “Capitán Sol,” told a military officer from the customs in Guaymas, Sonora, that he would speak with Ojeda Durán to “control the situation” of the Torn Agnes, another vessel loaded with illegal fuel that had arrived at the border port.
The new testimony
The witness, identified with the initials J.C.S.P., belongs to the Navy and worked with ship captain Luis Alfredo García Arellano Villegas, then in charge of the Guaymas customs. According to their statement, to which EL PAÍS had access, this duo managed the entry of the Seaways Citron ship in October 2023, an operation that “was already agreed upon in central areas” and had authorization from the Farías Laguna brothers, nephews of Ojeda Durán.
At that time, Captain Sol indicated how to distribute a bribe of 2.5 million pesos between civil and military customs officials. The statement details that they kept the money in the weapons storage room of the premises.
The defense of Ojeda Durán’s nephews—Roberto Manuel and Fernando Farías Laguna, accused of leading the plot—asked the authorities for the former secretary to testify. The request, submitted in early June, was not granted. The lawyers argued that the new testimony suggests that Ojeda Durán not only knew the facts, but “presumably could be related.”
Another key evidence is the handwritten letter that Fernando Rubén Guerrero Alcántar, a soldier involved, gave to Ojeda Durán in June 2024. In an audio published by Aristegui Noticias, Ojeda Durán is heard offering him a kind of pact of silence: “Either we uncover all this and I don’t care who falls… or we try to close it here ourselves.” Guerrero Alcántar was deprived of his life five months later, in November 2024, and his letter did not reach the Prosecutor’s Office until July 2025.
The Government has tried to separate Ojeda Durán from the case, but the dates and facts place him at the center. The Prosecutor’s Office did not respond to questions about this new evidence; The Secretary of the Navy said that it maintains collaboration but is not the “competent authority” to report.
