The fines were more than double the previous record for a cartel and would have been larger if the companies had refused to cooperate.
It comes after previous attacks by the cartel in which 15 state police officers were killed and an army was shot down by a rocket launcher, the first time this has occurred in the country's history.
It wasn't the first time the Marines had used helicopter gunships against cartel targets, but previous incidents had been in rural areas, not the heart of a city.
Eurocrats, their friends and neighbours are pretty familiar with the removal industry, being part of the floating expatriate universe (as is this blogger, to be honest, who has used at least two of the firms targeted in this probe for previous international moves).Often, anti-cartel probes are launched following complaints from other companies in a given industry.
My recollection is that it was the Arab-led OPEC cartel that caused the previous crises in the 1970's, when OPEC reduced oil production.
"In previous tunnels designed for the Sinaloa cartel, pulley systems were used to remove dirt and transport the merchandise," Malcolm Beith, the author of The Last Narco: The Hunt for El Chapo, the World's Most Wanted Drug Lord, told me.
Over the previous few years, the city's dominant drug cartel, known as the Arellano Félix cartel, after the family that runs it, had been, as many of García Luna's top aides told me, practically dismantled.
In addition to Torre (who ran for governor only after his own brother, Rodolfo Torre Cantú, was murdered while campaigning in June 2010 in what many believe was a cartel-sanctioned hit), the previous governors of Tamaulipas have an interesting history.
He has abandoned the previous administration's practice of parading captured cartel members, their weapons and their stacks of cash before the news media.
Their previous partnership was for 2015's Mexican cartel thriller, Sicario, for which Jóhannsson received an Oscar nomination.
