The wife of Mexican drug trafficker "
El Chapo
", Emma Coronel, arrested in February at Washington airport, pleaded guilty on Thursday (June 10) to having participated in drug trafficking, as part of an agreement with federal prosecutors Americans.
Read also: Mexico: in the lands of El Chapo, between blind admiration and mutual fear
During a hearing before Washington Federal Judge Rudolph Contreras, this 31-year-old former beauty queen said she was "
guilty
" of the three charges against her, namely involvement in drug trafficking, money laundering. monetary instruments, and transactions with a foreign drug trafficker.
Prosecutors say the woman, who has dual American and Mexican nationality, also helped "
El Chapo
" escape a Mexican prison in 2015. The drug trafficker then escaped through a one-kilometer tunnel and half, emerging in the shower of his cell and equipped with rails, inflicting a stinging snub to the Mexican authorities.
The sentence of Emma Coronel, who had two twin daughters with El Chapo, is due on September 15.
These charges theoretically put him at risk of up to 10 years in prison, but this agreement to plead guilty should earn him a reduced sentence.
A source familiar with the matter said on Tuesday that such an agreement had been reached.
Joaquin Guzman aka “
El Chapo
”, 64, was sentenced in July 2019 to life imprisonment, after a high-security trial in New York, to which Emma Coronel attended almost daily. He is serving his sentence in a high security Colorado prison. He was for years, until his extradition from Mexico to the United States in 2017, considered the most powerful drug trafficker in the world.