The Man's a Pro

El Enemigo in Casa includes a lengthy section about Zhenli Ye Gon, the Chinese businessman in whose house $205 million in drug money was found in 2007. The authors refer to Zhenli as a professional gambler, referring to his admission of "having lost between 1997 and 2006 also in Las Vegas, $41 million (later it would become known that, in reality, in 2006 alone, he had lost $80 million)." He lost 80 million and he's a professional? That actually sounds more amateur to me.

The authors, Ana María Salazar Slack and Jorge Fernández Menéndez, speculate on how Zhenli was able to live free in the United States for so long after the seizure of the money, and despite an Interpol warrant. One explanation, probably the correct one, is that the DEA, usually way ahead of their counterparts, was in this case way behind the Mexican and European authorities, and they didn't quite no how to react. The authors also lay out another possibility:

There are [in Zhenli's possession] photos signed by President Bush, and letters from the president of the Republican Party thanking him for his support, presumably in the last electoral campaigns. Could it be that Ye Gon financially supported the Republican electoral campaign and that the government of that country doesn't want to link the presidential with a drug dealer? Let's not forget how in the past there have been stories relating the Chinese businessmen with shady dealings in American electoral campaigns.