The transfer left the DEA regional workplace in Mexico Metropolis, which oversees the company’s operations in Mexico and Central America, with out a full-time resident director for at the very least six months starting in June 2021 — simply because the Biden administration was beginning to confront the disaster.

The upheaval in one of many DEA’s most necessary places of work was an embarrassing distraction as brokers tried to work with Mexico’s corruption-ridden safety businesses to discourage drug trafficking, in line with a number of U.S. officers who labored within the nation lately.

“You’ll be able to’t repair what’s going unsuitable within the Mexican authorities if your individual home is on hearth,” stated one ex-DEA agent. Like different present and former U.S. officers, he spoke on the situation of anonymity to debate a delicate personnel matter.

This week the Justice Division’s inside watchdog stated it had discovered {that a} DEA regional director misused company funds for his celebration and for “unallowable objects” throughout journeys by the company’s prime official. The director was in the end “faraway from DEA” primarily based on a second investigation, the Workplace of the Inspector Common stated in a abstract, but it surely supplied no particulars.

The workplace didn’t determine the official. The DEA’s former Mexico regional director, Nick Palmeri, confirmed to The Washington Submit that the assertion referred to him. He blasted the discharge, which he stated “erroneously states that I used to be faraway from the DEA.” His departure, he wrote in a WhatsApp message, “ought to be thought of as a pressured retirement.”

He stated the investigation into his spending “was used as a part of an ill-conceived narrative to take away me from my place” on account of an inside feud on the company.

The company, requested concerning the case, stated: “The DEA holds its 10,000 staff to the best requirements of conduct and professionalism. When an worker is discovered to haven’t lived as much as these requirements, DEA takes decisive motion, together with removing from the company.”

The episode is the most recent black eye for an company that’s been buffeted by corruption scandals, together with the jailing of a Miami-based DEA agent who pleaded responsible in 2020 to diverting greater than $9 million from undercover operations to fund expensive sports activities automobiles, luxurious journey and events.

Palmeri, a onetime New York Metropolis police officer who had labored on the DEA workplace in Guadalajara, Mexico, and later held a senior function within the company’s New York workplace, was generally known as a proficient investigator. He began as regional director in Mexico Metropolis in early 2020.

It was a very difficult second. López Obrador had decreased cooperation with the DEA, citing Mexico’s sovereignty and a shift in coverage from specializing in capturing drug kingpins to operating social packages for youth and the poor.

Then the coronavirus pandemic struck.

The virus swept by DEA’s workplace within the Pacific coast metropolis of Mazatlán, Mexico, after company staff held conferences in violation of embassy well being protocols, in line with 4 present and former U.S. officers. Two DEA brokers turned so unwell they have been medivacked to the USA, they stated.

Issues solely received worse for the DEA. In October 2020, U.S. authorities arrested former Mexican protection minister Salvador Cienfuegos in Los Angeles on drug-trafficking allegations. That provoked such outrage in Mexico that the Trump administration dropped the fees and despatched the overall dwelling. López Obrador, unmollified, signed a legislation sharply limiting the DEA’s actions within the nation, and his administration held up visas for about 20 American brokers for months.

Amid the turbulence, officers at DEA headquarters started receiving experiences of alleged mismanagement within the Mexico workplace. In June 2021, Palmeri was ordered again to Washington as investigators probed the allegations.

Within the report abstract launched Wednesday, the inspector basic’s workplace stated the regional director had used DEA funds meant for skilled gatherings for an inappropriate exercise: his personal celebration. The director additionally authorized fee for “unallowable objects” throughout journeys by the DEA’s prime official, the workplace stated, dipping into funds that have been supposed for use for delicate drug investigations. It didn’t describe the objects.

Among the many incidents that investigators scrutinized was a celebration on a yacht organized for then-DEA appearing administrator Timothy Shea throughout a go to to Panama, in line with present and former DEA brokers. It was not clear whether or not the investigators discovered any wrongdoing; Shea, a Trump appointee, declined to remark. Palmeri stated that renting the yacht was “100% justified {and professional}” and that “the outcomes and relationships cultivated” on his watch with “minimal expenditures” have been price it. One other former DEA agent stated the yacht was rented as a result of eating places in Panama have been off-limits through the pandemic.

The inspector basic’s workplace determined to not search felony prosecution, it stated in its assertion. However the DEA had opened a second investigation into a number of different questions, together with whether or not Palmeri had improper relationships with protection attorneys for drug traffickers, in line with present and former U.S. officers educated concerning the probe.

That’s a delicate topic for the DEA: Final Might, federal prosecutors charged a retired company supervisor in Miami and an active-duty agent with participating in an alleged scheme to go legislation enforcement data to protection attorneys representing traffickers.

The DEA declined to offer any particulars on that second probe. However the Related Press, citing inside company paperwork, stated one focus was a two-day go to by Palmeri and his spouse in early 2021 to a house within the Florida Keys owned by David Macey, a outstanding protection lawyer. The journey violated company guidelines aimed toward avoiding the looks of impropriety, the AP stated.

Palmeri, in a message to The Submit, acknowledged making the go to however stated he hadn’t been concerned in a case linked to Macey in years.

The AP stated Palmeri additionally met privately with a confidential supply throughout that journey. “There was no contemporaneous official DEA documentation” on the debriefing, a violation of DEA coverage, investigators wrote, in line with the AP. A former DEA official with information of the investigation confirmed to The Submit that the conferences have been central to the probe.

Palmeri stated he by no means engaged in any unethical conduct. “I strongly deny improper contact with protection attorneys,” he instructed The Submit. He blamed the investigation on a “private vendetta” by one other DEA official, whom he declined to determine. He stated the probe had concluded with a suggestion that “I be terminated.”

As for the inspector basic’s report, he stated, objects have been “taken out of context.” His expenditures on actions with Mexican officers “have been skilled” and benefited the U.S. authorities, he stated, and any minor procedural violations have been “most frequently resolved with corrective actions.” Palmeri left the company in March 2022.

Considered one of Palmeri’s former colleagues stated he was an impressive investigator however had the freewheeling, bigger-than-life fashion of many DEA brokers who’d constructed their careers in New York. “They have been programmed in a different way,” with main roles in among the nation’s greatest drug circumstances, assembled by extremely aggressive prosecutors, the ex-official stated. “It was okay to remain on the sting.”

Whereas Palmeri was out of Mexico and underneath investigation, officers stated, the DEA periodically despatched a revered senior official, Paul Knierim, to fill in. A everlasting alternative was named in November 2021. However that new director, Todd Zimmerman, didn’t transfer to the nation full time till mid-2022, in line with a State Division official, who spoke on the situation of anonymity to debate personnel issues.

Whereas Palmeri was being investigated, U.S. legislation enforcement was dealing with a mounting fentanyl disaster. Greater than 107,000 Individuals died of drug overdoses in 2021, the most recent knowledge out there. Two-thirds of these have been brought on by fentanyl. The artificial opioid has develop into the main reason for dying for Individuals ages 18 to 49, in line with a Submit evaluation of dying knowledge for 2021 from the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention.

The stream of a budget drug throughout the U.S. border reveals no signal of diminishing. The DEA seized greater than 50 million unlawful fentanyl tablets final yr — twice the quantity in 2021 — and over 10,000 kilos of fentanyl powder. Mexico’s two greatest drug cartels, which visitors a lot of the U.S. fentanyl, are the “DEA’s prime operational precedence,” the company’s administrator, Anne Milgram, stated in December.

Kevin Sieff in Mexico Metropolis and Scott Higham, Perry Stein and Cate Brown in Washington contributed to this report.