Corruption purge in Mexican customs

The Mexican-US border is the busiest in the wolrd

By Peter Greste in Mexico City

The new head of Mexico's customs services had sacked 43 of the department's 47 supervisors in a crackdown on widespread corruption.

Jose Guzman Montalvo says he will rebuild the entire department to make sure the culture of corruption does not take root.

If you can pass an elephant through the border, you can pass everything you want; but remember, we are changing the whole system

Jose Guzman Montalvo

Mexico's customs service has been widely criticised for collaborating with criminals crossing the country's borders and for flagrant abuses of power.

The customs service is generally seen as one of the most corrupt institutions in a corrupt country, but the last straw came earlier this week when it was revealed that a circus elephant had somehow managed to cross the border without customs officially being aware of it.

Low point

Mr Montalvo admitted that the incident was a low point for the service.

"If you can pass an elephant through the border, you can pass everything you want; but remember, we are changing the whole system. The port director that let through the elephant in the port of Matamoris is no longer with us," Mr Montalvo.

Benny the circus elephant passed through Mexican customs without being noticed

In fact, he is just one of the port directors or supervisors who have just been sacked for similar abuses.

Only four have kept their jobs, while every one of the 50 so-called chiefs of customs police has also been fired.

Culture of corruption

Even before the dismissals, Mr Montalvo said he would introduce new procedures that had increased the customs service's January tax earnings five times over the same month last year.

The problem, he said, was that there was lack of supervision and a deeply-ingrained culture of corruption.

"Some officers, some port directors and some customs police - they didn't follow the orders from the system, so they thought they were independent from the system, so we are trying to put in new people that we feel are people with another philosophy of working for Mexico," Mr Montalvo said.

Busiest frontier

But the problem is vast. The frontier between Mexico and the United States is the world's busiest.

Last year alone, more than 50 million people crossed between San Diego in the US and Tijuana, south of the border.

The sweep through the customs service comes as the new government announced a commission to end decades of corruption across the public service.