A senior Mexican navy officer has been arrested along with a number of business leaders and Government officials in connection with a massive fuel seizure in northern Mexico earlier this year, a federal agent confirmed. Vice Adm Manuel Roberto Farias Laguna — a relative of a former navy secretary — was detained on Tuesday as part of an investigation that began in March, when officials intercepted a ship carrying 10 million litres of fuel in the Gulf port of Tampico, said the agent who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to comment. Farias Laguna is the highest-ranking officer arrested under President Claudia Sheinbaum’s crackdown on fuel theft, known in Mexico as huachicol. Such theft has long plagued the state-owned oil company Pemex, costing it $3.8 billion in just five years. US authorities warn that drug cartels are increasingly using intermediaries in Mexico’s oil and gas industry to smuggle stolen fuel into the United States. The US Drug Enforcement Administration has reported that Mexico’s most powerful cartels help finance their operations through fuel theft.Federal Security Secretary Omar García Harfuch said on Saturday that both company executives and public officials were arrested after the March 31 seizure in Tampico. He pledged that investigations would continue.