Judge indicts ex-navy officer and sets six months in huachicol fiscal case

A control judge at the Federal Criminal Justice Center in Almoloya de Juárez bound Miguel Ángel Solano Ruiz, a retired corvette captain of the Secretariat of the Navy, over for trial on Thursday, October 8, 2026 on charges of organized crime with the purpose of committing crimes involving hydrocarbons, the Attorney General's Office (FGR) reported.

Judge Marina Vieyra Valdés upheld the mandatory pretrial detention and granted the FGR six months to close the complementary investigation, according to El Universal. The Federal Public Prosecutor's Office, attached to the Specialized Prosecutor's Office for Organized Crime, submitted the evidence supporting the charge; the agency stressed that the detainee is presumed innocent as long as no conviction is handed down. Solano Ruiz was arrested on October 2 in Zapopan, Jalisco.

The case forms part of the investigations into a maritime fuel-smuggling network known as huachicol fiscal, a scheme that consists of bringing hydrocarbons into the country through smuggling or declaring them as products subject to lower tax burdens in order to evade taxes. Unlike theft from pipelines, this crime occurs at the point of entry into the territory, where the cargo is documented before the customs authority.

The investigations date back to 2024, when the then secretary of the Navy, Rafael Ojeda Durán, handed the FGR indications of possible illicit operations, and they gained momentum after the March 2025 seizure of a vessel carrying some eight million liters of hydrocarbon in Altamira, Tamaulipas.

The secretary of Security and Citizen Protection, Omar García Harfuch, told the Political Coordination Board of the Chamber of Deputies on Thursday that the fight against huachicol has produced arrests of navy personnel, businesspeople and suspected criminals. Regarding the 10 million liters confiscated on March 19, 2025 from a vessel at the port of Tampico, he said they remain in the custody of the FGR, along with seized weapons and vehicles.

The investigation reaches navy commanders, among them the brothers Manuel Roberto and Fernando Farías Laguna, both under investigation for organized crime and hydrocarbon-related crimes. Manuel Roberto remains subject to criminal proceedings in Mexico; Fernando was arrested in Argentina and later handed over to the Mexican authorities.

Solano Ruiz remains held at the Altiplano maximum-security prison. The case will continue in the complementary investigation stage, within the six-month deadline the judge set for the FGR.

This article was written with the assistance of artificial intelligence based on verified sources and reviewed by a human editor before publication.