Obama to return suspect donations

last updated 8 January 2015

President Obama’s re-election campaign will return about $200,000 in donations collected by two Chicago men whose brother fled drug and fraud charges in the U.S. Juan Jose Rojas Cardona jumped bail in Iowa in 1994 and disappeared, and has since been linked to violence and corruption in Mexico. A State Department cable in 2009 alleged that Cardona, who is said to maintain ties to his brothers in Chicago, had orchestrated the assassination of a business rival and made illegal campaign donations to Mexican officials. “When we found out about these entanglements, we returned all the money that they donated and raised,” said David Axelrod, Obama’s senior re-election adviser.