MEXICO HOLDS FORMER POLICE CHIEF FOR DRUGS-REPORTS

MEXICO CITY, Feb 27 (Reuters) - A former Mexican police chief, accused of
taking up to $1 million in bribes from a powerful drug cartel, was detained
by police, newspapers reported on Saturday.

El Universal newspaper and Reforma daily said Rodolfo Leon Aragon, ex-head
of Mexico's equivalent of the FBI, the federal judicial police, was
arrested on Friday in the port of Salina Cruz in the southern Mexican state
of Oaxaca.

A spokesman for the Attorney General's Office (PGR) said he could not
immediately confirm the reports.

According to the papers, Leon Aragon's detention came after the PGR last
weekend issued arrest warrants for around 40 former government officials
and businessmen allegedly in the pay of the Juarez cartel.

He was named head of the judicial police in 1993 but sent as a special PGR
agent to Guatemala soon after.

The PGR alleges Leon Aragon accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in
protection money from late Juarez cartel boss Amado Carrillo Fuentes, who
died in mid-1997 after an extensive plastic surgery operation went wrong.

The Juarez mob, based in the northern border city of Ciudad Juarez, is
among Mexico's top three drug-smuggling organisations.

Universal said Leon Aragon had been running a small business in Salina Cruz.

The arrest of the former high-flying police officer came on the same day
the White House "recertified" Mexico as an ally in the drug war, saving it
from economic sanctions. Certification must still pass through the U.S.
Congress.

Leon Aragon's detention meant police had carried out six of the just-under-
40 arrest warrants issued last weekend, which the PGR said were in
connection with the drugs trade and money-laundering operations in the
southeastern tourism state of Quintana Roo.