Jorge Hank Rhon

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Jorge Hank Rhon is a controversial Mexican millionaire businessman, the owner of Mexico's largest sports betting company, Caliente. He served from December 2004 to February 2007 as the president of the municipality of Tijuana when he was replaced by Kurt Honold. He is the son of former Mexico City mayor Carlos Hank González.

Mr. Hank (his legal surname) is also known as an animal lover. However, his purported love for animals has been fouled by reports that many of his animals are the result of smuggling. In 1991, he was directly linked to a failed illicit deal for an endangered gorilla, but was never formally charged. His most famous customs run-in came in 1995, when he was caught carrying a suitcase full of ivory tusks, pearl vests and coats made from the skins of endangered ocelots, but Mr. Hank claimed that no law had been broken and the merchandise was legal. He was later acquitted ([1]).

He won the Tijuana mayoral race of 2004, beating PAN candidate Jorge Ramos by a slim margin, thus ending 12 years of PAN government in Tijuana. His apparent charisma and high profile lifestyle, along with the support of the general population due to his perceived generosity and charity, may have assisted him in surmounting the political disadvantage.

He has been linked by the media with various drug lords and money-laundering after the leak of National Drug Intelligence Center-drafted documents. However, the United States Attorney General at the time Janet Reno discredited such report ([2]) and apologized to the Hank family.

Newsweekly Zeta magazine runs a page on every edition asking Hank why his bodyguard at the time gunned down one of the Zeta journalists, Héctor Félix Miranda and asks the governor to find the intellectual author of his murder.

[edit] Run for Baja California's governor

At the end of 2006, Jorge Hank expressed his wishes to run a campaign for the 2007 Governor election. This flared up comments from PAN politics saying that he would be violating the state's Antichapulin ("anti-grasshopper") law which prohibits a person of public office to "jump" from one charge to another without ending their current term. However, due to its gramatical errors ([3]) it is up to the interpretation of the state electoral council which certified on July 2, 2006 that the mayors of municipalities (municipal presidents), such as Hank, are not forbidden leaving theirs posts to run as candidates for other posts ([4])