Ruffo Appel’s Company Triangulated Funds for More Than $3 Billion

ByGustavo Castillo García

This article by Gustavo Castillo García originally appeared in the July 19, 2026 edition of La Jornada, Mexico’s premier left wing daily newspaper.

The financial scheme under which the company Ingemar operated, of which former Baja California governor Ernesto Ruffo Appel is the majority shareholder, triangulated funds, mainly from the company Crismón Hidrocarburos y Derivados, and its operations were linked, according to investigations by Mexico’s Attorney General’s Office (FGR), to the U.S. companies Belar Fuels Company and Unico Commodities LLC.

FGR information states that through Grupo Financiero Intercam, from June 2024 to July 2025, Ingemar made national and international transfers totaling 3 billion 75 million 560 thousand pesos, which would be related to funds obtained from fuel smuggled from Texas and distributed in the national territory.

Belar Fuels Company is located in Houston, Texas, is a company dedicated to the commercialization of oil and its derivatives, and has been investigated by the Specialized Prosecutor’s Office for Organized Crime and the Financial Intelligence Unit as part of the network that allowed the illegal import of more than 15 million liters of diesel and gasoline.

According to the fund triangulation schemes, the company Ingemar made money transfers without receiving any financial flow back from Belar Fuels Company.

Additionally, it is noted that the company Unico Commodities LLC, founded in 2019, is a commodities trading company based in Houston, Texas; it was initially named United Fuel Supply Caribbean LLC, and in 2021 changed its name to its current one.

According to various business information sources, the company’s main way of moving fuels and their derivatives is “maritime assets,” and it also maintains a fleet of trucks that provide ground transportation.

Unico Commodities LLC is identified in the FGR’s scheme as a contributor of income for Ingemar.

Meanwhile, Ingemar had as two of its main fund destinations the company Dragados y Puertos which, according to its website, is “the first company in Mexico’s northern Pacific with a significant capacity to carry out dredging, maritime-port civil works and vessel salvage.”

It also performs “permanent maintenance of the depth of navigation channels, maneuvering anchorages and waterfronts in small, medium and large ports, terminals and marinas located in the Pacific from Baja California to the Republic of Panama.”

The company that contributed the largest volume of funds to Ingemar and returned them to the company Ruffo Appel heads as a shareholder is Crismón Hidrocarburos y Derivados, so the FGR states in its analyses that Ingemar “depends financially on funds from Crismón Hidrocarburos y Derivados, which are later channeled to international foreign companies, forming a financial flow scheme with signs of fund triangulation.”

Additionally, it is explained that Ingemar shows “incongruent behavior with its tax profile, registering income from flows exceeding 3 billion 75 million pesos in national accounts and foreign exchange operations of more than 1 billion 386 million dollars, with a pattern of immediate dispersal of funds.”

Ingemar’s financial operation registers more than 80 linked accounts in national institutions, but above all with Grupo Financiero Intercam, one of the three financial institutions identified by the United States, along with CIBanco, of facilitating transfers and laundering capital on behalf of cartels such as Jalisco New Generation and Sinaloa, to acquire chemical precursors from China. The other institutions mentioned as used in Ingemar’s financial schemes are Grupo Financiero Monex and BBVA.