*One doesn't know whether to laugh or cry. I guess if one snorted a few sticky brown rails of Sino-Mexican meth, maybe some mad cackling Hunter Thompson-style laughter might be in order before one's teeth fell out.
*One has to wonder what it's like to *be* Zhenli Ye Gon. He must be pretty used to the slammer by now, but when his eyes open in the morning in his cell, how does he assemble his internal narrative? "Time to head for Mexico and tackle those weapons charges." They pulled 200 million dollars out of his house. He always claimed the money came from a Mexican political party. The government didn't seem to have any trouble spending all of it. Hope they didn't spend it on drugs.
http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/PubArticleNLJ.jsp?id=1202432522319&A_losing_hand&slreturn=1
"In the eyes of the Justice Department, Zhenli Ye Gon is a major player.
"The one-time fugitive allegedly amassed a fortune importing and selling ingredients to methamphetamine producers in Mexico. A March 2007 raid on his mansion in Mexico City turned up $207 million in bundled cash — the single largest seizure of alleged drug money in the world. (((That was when Zhenli's fairy-tale-like story first showed up on the BEYOND THE BEYOND sonar.))) When federal drug agents arrested him in an Asian restaurant in suburban Maryland in July 2007, they were certain they had nabbed a kingpin.
"With the arrest of Zhenli Ye Gon, we've apprehended not only the man behind the money, but the man behind the meth," Karen Tandy, then administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration, declared in a statement. The case was heralded as a collaborative feat by the governments of Mexico and the United States.
"This week, Justice Department lawyers will head to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, where a judge is expected to dismiss the government's case against Ye Gon.
"Two years after indicting Ye Gon on a single conspiracy count, prosecutors admitted they didn't have much of a case. A key witness recanted. Another refused to cooperate. A judge in Mexico turned down American prosecutors' access to certain evidence. China presented "stumbling blocks" when the Justice Department wanted to depose witnesses there. And the trial judge accused prosecutors of hiding critical information from the defense team for nearly a year. (((I guess we should be grateful that they didn't just disappear the guy into a covert CIA jail in some third-party country. Maybe they wanted to, but couldn't handle the paperwork.)))
"Prosecutors are now asking that the indictment against Ye Gon be dismissed without prejudice and that he be turned over to Mexico, where he is charged with, among other things, organized crime and firearm and drug violations. (((On the face of it, I don't see how the organized crime and drug charges have any objective evidence, besides the stark fact that there was a horde of $200 million in black-globalization money inside the guy's main residence. He had a couple of guns. I reckon that's pretty bad, but maybe he needed 'em because of all the narco-rangers raiding his home.)))
"The collapse of the Ye Gon case is the latest in a string of troubled high-profile Justice Department prosecutions. In April, the Justice Department asked that the public corruption guilty verdict against former Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) be thrown out because prosecutors had failed to turn over key evidence to the defense. Justice prosecutors dropped charges in May against two pro-Israel lobbyists who were accused of illegally passing on national security information. And on May 8, a jury in federal court in Montana dealt Justice a big loss in finding W.R. Grace & Co. not guilty on charges that it knowingly exposed residents to asbestos.
"It is more likely to be viewed as an embarrassment because it comes at a difficult time for the department," said Cadwalader, Wicker sham & Taft partner Jodi Aver gun, a former chief of the Justice Depart ment Criminal Division's Narcotics and Dangerous Drug Section who practices white-collar criminal defense in Washington. The government, Avergun said, was right not to push to trial with a shaky case. "The Justice Department laid its cards on the table," she said.
"But a review of court records and hearing transcripts shows the Justice Department may never have held a winning hand. (((I don't think the Justice Department has ever recovered its morale since being publicly crushed like a bug by Microsoft. These people used to tower on the legal landscape, back when extremely rich guys used to occasionally face some justice.)))
"BUILDING A CASE
"The DEA and the Mexican attorney general's organized crime unit launched a joint investigation of Ye Gon and his pharmaceutical import company, Unimed Pharm Chem of Mexico, in March 2006. The probe was part of a crackdown on secret methamphetamine labs in Mexico and tighter regulation of the sale of pseudoephedrine in the United States.
"Unimed (((That's such a great "biological parts catalog" name. They should tinker up a window-farm meth factory out of spare E Coli parts and sell it on eBay))) had permits to import pseudoephedrine and ephedrine into Mexico until July 2005, when the Mexican government pulled the paperwork, prosecutors said. (((Not that anybody noticed.))) Ye Gon, a 46-year-old native of China who moved to Mexico in 1990, illegally continued importing the "chemical cousins" of the two ingredients from a supplier in China and then made pseudoephedrine, according to prosecutors.The drug was then sold on the black market in Mexico, prosecutors alleged.
"On March 15, 2007, Mexican authorities raided Ye Gon's home, seizing $205 million cash — mainly in $100 bills — hidden in closets, false walls and suitcases, according to prosecutors. There was another $2 million in other currency — including euros, pesos and Hong Kong dollars. Authorities said they found an automatic AK-47 assault rifle and several handguns, including a pistol with an obliterated serial number. (((I expect Zhenli's lawyer to argue that the cops brought the throwdown guns along and planted them.)))
"Then-DEA administrator Tandy issued a press release — along with photos of the seized money — claiming that the search was "like law enforcement hitting the ultimate jackpot." (((Yeah, it was, which is why this humiliating climbdown three years later is like hitting the ultimate screwup. Too bad it's in some obscure law journal instead of the front page of the Washington Post.)))
"A month after the raid, DEA agents traveled to a Unimed plant to inspect chemicals and residue, according to court records. Mexican authorities on June 13, 2007, filed criminal charges against Ye Gon and sought his arrest. Ye Gon was far from Mexico when the authorities found him.
"Ye Gon was eating dinner at an Asian restaurant in Wheaton, Md., on July 23, 2007, when DEA agents swarmed in and arrested him on a criminal complaint. Three days later, a grand jury in Washington indicted Ye Gon on a single charge of conspiring to aid or abet the manufacture of more than 500 grams of methamphetamine, knowing that the drug would be imported by the United States. The crime carries a minimum-mandatory 10-year prison term. (A superseding indictment lodged against Ye Gon in November 2008 added China to the countries where the alleged scheme took place.)
"Justice Department trial attorneys Paul Laymon and Wanda Dixon, prosecutors in the Narcotic and Dangerous Drug Section, picked up the Ye Gon case. Dixon spent seven years as an assistant U.S. attorney in Washington before moving over to the section two years ago. Laymon, a former federal prosecutor in Tennessee who has been with the section for four years, is an expert in meth investigations. He helped establish the Southeast Tennessee Methamphetamine Task Force in 1999. (((One wonders why the Justice Department didn't find prosecutors with some expertise in international diplomacy. Southeast Tennessee is a beautiful area but it doesn't exactly prep one for confronting the Chinese.)))
"TROUBLE FROM THE START
"Just one week after Ye Gon's arrest, the government's case was already under fire.
"Magistrate Judge Alan Kay, who was deciding whether to keep Ye Gon locked up, questioned the government's evidence. Kay said the Mexican government's seizure of 19 tons of a chemical containing pseudoephedrine in December 2006 suggested the illegal importation of chemicals into Mexico — not the United States. But the judge said overall the "government proffered only thin evidence in support of its case," court records show. Aside from the cash and weapons seized, the judge said in an order, "there was little before the Court at the hearing to establish defendant's involvement in a conspiracy to import illegal drugs into the United States." Still, Kay ordered Ye Gon detained on the serious nature of the conspiracy allegation itself and noted that Ye Gon was a potential flight risk.
"Defense lawyers point out that single-count indictments without underlying drug offenses generally suggest that authorities did not let the investigation play out long enough to catch a suspect closer to the drugs. "Any smart lawyer who sees a single-count indictment in a case of this size knows he will have his day in court," said Bernard Grimm, a partner in the Washington office of Philadelphia-based Cozen O'Connor who is not involved in the Ye Gon case.
"Ye Gon, according to his lawyers, was a legitimate businessman against whom the Mexican government conspired because of his Chinese heritage. In a July 2007 affidavit, Ye Gon called himself an "ultra-successful" entrepreneur. "I am not a drug dealer, neither am I a drug lord, much less a drug kingpin," he said. (((I guess there's some slim, technical possibility that Zhenli literally and factually had nothing to do with drugs, in which case this story becomes a hundred times more bizarre than it already is.)))
"In the course of two years, Ye Gon hired and fired several lawyers; his latest counsel — retained in October 2008 — are Washington-based attorneys Manuel Retureta of Retureta & Wassem and solo practitioner A. Eduardo Balarezo.
"Lawyers for Ye Gon said the $207 million seized from their client's home has been spent by the Mexican government. (((How handy for them.)))
"Two months into the case, Laymon pitched the possibility of a deal, according to Ye Gon's lawyer Martin McMahon of Washington's McMahon & Associates. "He sat down in my office here and said, 'You know, Martin, there is a way here to plead him out. We can do a deal.' I said, 'Paul, that is impossible. This is going to trial one way or another,' " recalled McMahon. Laymon declined to comment, as did a Justice spokeswoman.
"Judge Emmet Sullivan was also skeptical of the government's case. He asked prosecutors about how they planned to prove that Ye Gon knew the chemicals he was selling ultimately became meth that was then distributed in the United States as opposed to any other country. Justice lawyers, who were reluctant to reveal details of their investigation in open court, told the judge that most of the methamphetamine in the United States is made in secret labs in Mexico.
"Defense lawyers argued there was no physical evidence tying Ye Gon to methamphetamine. "Ask yourself, your honor, if this guy is into meth, was any meth found at the house? No. Was any meth found at the facility? No. At the warehouse? At his executive office? I mean, give me a break, your honor. This case is a travesty," McMahon said at a 2007 hearing.
When pressed by the defense to turn over chemical samples taken from Ye Gon's property in Mexico, prosecutors said a judge in Mexico was preventing that information from being released.
One issue that consumed a considerable amount of time in court and in briefs dealt with the Chinese government. Last September, Justice trial attorneys asked for permission to depose witnesses in China at the company that reportedly sold chemicals to Ye Gon.
Laymon said in court papers in September 2008 that the depositions would show that Ye Gon imported "staggering" amounts of chemicals from China and that he only sold a "relatively small portion" to other pharmaceutical companies. In May, the government suddenly backed off. Laymon sent a one-sentence e-mail to Ye Gon's lawyers that said: "Counsel: The government is no longer seeking depositions in China."
At a June 2 hearing, Laymon explained that, while "trying to negotiate with the Chinese government, the terms of the depositions, we encountered some stumbling blocks" over conditions China wanted to impose on the Justice Department. "So the bottom line is you don't have cooperation from China then?" Sullivan asked.
"Well, yes and no, judge, because as I've learned in this case, things have a habit of turning quickly or changing quickly so that since — " Laymon said. The judge cut him off.
"Is this case due for a change real quickly?" Sullivan asked.
PROSECUTION UNDER FIRE
On June 22, Laymon filed a five-page motion to dismiss the Ye Gon indictment, noting that the Justice Department expected Mexico to take the lead in prosecuting Ye Gon....
