Ryan Wedding affair: a Mexican judge suspected of corruption in turn caught by the courts

Two million dollars to free the alleged right-hand man of a cocaine trafficker: this is the deal that a Mexican judge would have accepted before being himself arrested in Colombia. This Thursday, November 5, American justice announced the arrest of Luis Benítez Alcántara, 49, dating back to Sunday, November 1. She accuses him of having accepted a bribe to free Andrew Clark, a 36-year-old Canadian accused of drug trafficking, murder and attempted murder. Washington now intends to obtain the extradition of the magistrate.

Clark would be the main lieutenant of Ryan Wedding, another Canadian whose career had begun in front of a completely different audience. In 2002, Wedding represented her country in snowboarding at the Olympic Games in Salt Lake City. US prosecutors now accuse him of leading an organization that shipped hundreds of kilos of Colombian cocaine to Canada, via Mexico and Southern California.

It was in this case that Clark was arrested in Mexico on October 8, 2024. In Mexico, Benítez was to supervise his extradition procedure, that is to say his handover to the American authorities so that he could be tried there. Washington officially made the request in November.

According to the indictment, consulted by Le Figaro, Clark then sought to buy his freedom: between November 2024 and February 2025, he paid some 2.75 million dollars to intermediaries, including two million intended for the magistrate. On February 24, 2025, Benítez received the entire agreed amount and authorized his release on bail the same day. A short-lived freedom: arrested again a few days later by Mexican authorities, Clark was finally transferred to the United States, where prosecutions remain ongoing.