MEXICO CITY , Mexico -LRB- CNN -RRB- -- Mexican authorities have detained the country 's former drug czar on suspicion that he may have accepted $ 450,000 a month in bribes from drug traffickers , Mexico 's attorney general said Friday . Noe Ramirez Mandujano was in charge from 2006 through August of fighting organized crime in Mexico . Noe Ramirez Mandujano was in charge from 2006 until this August of the attorney general 's office that specializes in combatting organized crime . Ramirez is accused of meeting with members of a drug cartel while he was in office and agreeing to provide information on investigations in exchange for the bribes , Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora Icaza said at a news conference Friday . The arrest was part of an ongoing investigation called `` Operation Limpieza , '' or `` Operation Cleanup , '' the attorney general said . The operation targets officials who may have passed information to drug cartels . The arrest was announced Thursday night , four days after the house arrest of Ricardo Gutierrez Vargas , the director for International Police Affairs at Mexico 's Federal Investigative Agency and the head of Mexico 's Interpol office . Authorities say more than 30 officials have been arrested since July in connection with the anti-corruption operation . Interpol , which is based in France , announced Wednesday it is sending a team of investigators to Mexico to investigate the possibility that its communications systems and databases may have been compromised , a prospect raised by the arrest of Gutierrez , the top official working with the agency in Mexico . `` A war of master proportions '' between authorities and narcotics traffickers and traffickers among themselves has left more than 4,300 dead so far this year , according to the Council on Hemispheric Affairs , an independent research and information organization . By comparison , the council said in a report this week , there were 2,700 drug-related deaths in 2007 . `` Homegrown drug cartels operating from both within and outside the country are engaging in a vicious turf war to seize control of major trafficking corridors while engaging in almost open warfare against the mobilized forces of the state , '' the council said about what it calls `` narco-fueled crime . '' Mexican leaders have been trying to tamp down the violence by tightening controls on money-laundering and cracking down on corruption among local and municipal police forces infiltrated by drug traffickers . It may not be enough . `` Due to pervasive corruption at the highest levels of the Mexican government , and the almost effortless infiltration of the porous security forces by the cartel , an ultimate victory by the state is far from certain , '' the Hemispheric Council concludes . Drug trafficking in Mexico is a $ 20 billion - to $ 50 billion-a-year industry , as much as the nation earns from tourism or remittances from Mexicans living in the United States , said Robert Pastor , a former National Security adviser to President Jimmy Carter and now a professor of international relations at American University in Washington . He has been studying Latin America for more than four decades . `` This is a huge industry with an extraordinary capacity to corrupt and intimidate the country . And they 're doing both right now , '' said Pastor , also a former director of the Carter Center 's Latin American and Caribbean Program . The drug cartels are paying some Mexican officials bribes of $ 150,000 to $ 450,000 a month , authorities have said . This in a country where the per capita income is $ 12,500 a year and one of every seven Mexicans lives in poverty , according to the CIA World Factbook .