Mexico Dissolves FBI-Like AFI, Announces PFM Agence France-Presse
go to original July 26, 2012

Members of Mexico's Federal Agency of Investigation (AFI) arrest a man during an anti-narcotics operation in Guerrero. (AFP)

Mexico officially dissolved its Federal Investigation Agency (AFI) on Thursday, and announced the formation of a new national crime-fighting agency with a "new working philosophy."

The AFO will make way for the new Ministerial Federal Police (PFM).

"We are not only changing a name, but a whole organization," said the new unit's director, Vidal Diaz-Leal.

Some 4,200 staff are available to start with PFM after a purge at the former AFI led to the dismissal of 721 staff and the resignation of another 242.

The now-defunct AFI was created in 2001 by the then president Vicente Fox, who modeled the organization on its US counterpart the Federal Bureau of Investigation and on Britain's Scotland Yard.

After Felipe Calderon was elected president in 2006, he combined the AFI and another law enforcement body, the Federal Preventative Police (PF), as part of a move to crack down on drug trafficking.

The combined organizations answered to the Ministry of Public Security.

Since then, the AFI has seen its duties and personnel gradually decrease, and a 2009 law laid the groundwork for the institution's eventual dissolution.

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