A portrait of Emma Coronel during Tuesday's hearing.JANE ROSENBERG / Reuters
A federal judge from the District of Columbia, in Washington, prosecuted Emma Coronel - Joaquín
El Chapo
Guzmán's
wife
- on
Tuesday in a public hearing
for the crimes of international drug trafficking and conspiracy to escape her husband in 2015 and another that was never executed, in 2017, prior to his extradition from Mexico to the United States.
The magistrate Robin Meriweather has ruled the prison without option to bail for the accused by the potential risk that it manages to evade justice.
In a court hearing by videoconference, the prosecution has read the charges to Coronel, for which he faces a minimum sentence of 10 years in prison up to a maximum sentence of life imprisonment, in addition to a fine of more than 10 million dollars.
The quick hearing, less than 30 minutes, has concluded that Coronel, 31 years old and mother of the drug trafficker's two twin daughters, will remain detained in an Alexandria prison (in the State of Virginia) while her process continues.
The defense has reserved the possibility of requesting a bond later to continue their process in freedom.
The US justice accuses her of collaborating closely with her husband, who was the most powerful drug trafficker in the world, to distribute hundreds of tons of drugs from Mexico to its northern neighbor.
And also, she is accused of having helped El Chapo carry out one of the most mediatic escapes in history: his escape from the Mexican high security prison of El Altiplano, in the summer of 2015, through a tunnel that connected showering his cell with a safe house via rails and a motorcycle.
According to the US authorities, Coronel was also plotting another escape with Guzmán's people in 2017, shortly before the kingpin's extradition to the United States.
Among the evidence that FBI agent Eric S. McGuire included to obtain the warrant for Coronel's arrest is an alleged letter from El Chapo in which he negotiates the heroin trade with an associate.
The agent assures that she acted as a messenger between Guzmán Loera and his partners.
The letter could have been written between 2014 and 2017.
“The mother of the twins will say something to you and my children.
Please be attentive compadre.
She will explain it to him ”, points out the handwritten letter allegedly by El Chapo to one of his associates and that appears in the file of the FBI agent to request the arrest warrant.
"The mother of the twins has a message for all of you," he adds.
Agent McGuire adds in his report that Coronel received the money from the sale of more than five kilos of heroin by El Chapo's associates.
According to the FBI, this letter was authenticated by several cooperating witnesses who participated in the El Chapo trials, among which is one of the drug's lieutenants, Dámaso López, known as
El Licenciado
, who spoke against him during the trial in 2019.
The public file only shows excerpts from that letter, but points to Coronel as a messenger between Guzmán Loera and his partners and sons, Iván, Alfredo, Ovidio and Joaquín.
And, according to the FBI, that note contains detailed instructions on the ongoing operations of the Sinaloa cartel, including the transport of narcotics.
Joaquín Guzmán Loera, former leader of the Sinaloa cartel, the largest organization dedicated to drug trafficking between Mexico and the United States, was sentenced in 2019 in a federal court in New York to life imprisonment.
After 11 weeks of trial, a popular jury found him guilty of 10 crimes, including running a criminal organization.
Often sitting alone on the defense bench in the second row of a room full of reporters, former model Emma Coronel went to her husband's trial in New York almost every day.
There he listened impassively to the story of El Chapo's lieutenants, who one after another paraded to betray him, recounting in detail the ins and outs of the multinational drug company that Guzmán led for 30 years.
One day a witness linked her to the escape from the Altiplano prison, another day it was revealed that her husband had sent her text messages asking her to hide his weapons before a police raid.
During those hearings, in which his wife was mentioned in the account of the more than 50 witnesses who appeared, many wondered how Coronel had managed to avoid problems with justice.
Now, American justice has knocked on his door.
Coronel met Guzmán Loera,
El Chapo
, at a party on a ranch.
She was 17 years old and had just won the Sinaloa beauty queen pageant.
He was 51 and was already the master of the largest criminal organization in the world.
While she was dancing at the ranch with her boyfriend at the time, a man approached her and told her that
"
the man
"
wanted to dance with her.
"Of course," I told him.
Because in the ranches, even if you have a boyfriend, you have to dance with all the people who invite you, ”he explained in an exclusive interview with the Telemundo network in 2018. That and that in the context of the Mexican criminal empire saying no to the chief of bosses was very expensive.
Coronel is Guzmán's third wife, whom he always defended: “I don't know that he traffics drugs.
I'm in love with him ”, she always insisted in front of the cameras.
This Tuesday he answered before the judge that he had understood everything at the hearing.
Including the details that the prosecution reported on how not only was she aware of her husband's business, but that “the accused worked closely with the command and control structure of the drug trafficking organization known as the Sinaloa cartel, especially with her husband".
"He has access to criminals who are members of the Sinaloa cartel, as well as economic means to generate a serious risk of flight," continued the prosecutor to request detention without bail.
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