The United States offers a reward of five million dollars for the children of El Chapo

Jesús Alfredo Guzmán Salazar, Ovidio Guzmán López and Iván Archivaldo Guzmán Salazar, children of Joaquín Guzmán Loera.

Washington intensifies its war against the Mexican cartels. Joe Biden's government has taken two new measures on Wednesday with the purpose of curbing the supply chain and financial networks of drug trafficking mafias that operate across the border. The Department of State offers as of today a reward of up to five million dollars for relevant information that leads to the arrest or conviction of four children of Joaquín

Guzmán, founder of the Sinaloa cartel, sentenced in 2019 to life imprisonment after his extradition to the United States. The president has also signed an executive order that updates the sanctions against his heirs and other leaders of that criminal organization, in addition to the Jalisco Nueva Generación Cartel, the Gulf Cartel, the Beltrán Leyva, the Zetas and the groups that control illegal trafficking in in northern Mexico.

Ovidio Guzmán López, Iván Archivaldo Guzmán Salazar, Jesús Alfredo Guzmán Salazar and Joaquín Guzmán López are particularly targeted by the US Administration. In addition to the sons of El Chapo, a statement from the State Department points out, "the four are high-ranking members of the Sinaloa cartel and each is linked to a federal indictment for their participation in illicit drug trafficking." Three of them have also been included in the new list of the Treasury Department to prevent them from circumventing the sanctions already imposed over the last decade. The purpose of the order, as reported by that agency, is to provide "new tools to address changes in the global illicit drug trade" that between 2020 and 2021 has left more than 100,000 deaths from overdoses in the United States.

“When transnational criminal organizations engage in drug and firearms trafficking, human trafficking, migrant smuggling, cybercrime, and money laundering [...] they threaten global public health, safety and security. national security of the United States and at the same time facilitate corruption that undermines the stability and security of friendly nations, ”the State Department statement reads. With these premises, the Biden government intends to take "important steps" in its fight against drug trafficking and "the worst drug epidemic" in its recent history, especially due to the increase in the use of heroin and synthetic opioids such as fentanyl.

Another decree signed by Biden this Wednesday constitutes a body called the Council against Transnational Organized Crime (USCTOC, for its acronym in English). This entity may request support from the Department of State and five other federal departments and agencies "to combat transnational organized crime more effectively." These measures by the US Administration come just one day after Washington and Mexico formalized in Mexico City the beginning of the so-called Bicentennial Understanding, an agreement that seeks to address the latest security crisis fueled by a new war between cartels.

The program, which replaces the so-called Mérida Initiative, a plan that contemplated millionaire investments in Mexico and dates back to the George W. Bush Administration, proposes a turn in the fight against drug use and emphasizes the development of communities such as fundamental premise. The document consists of three objectives and 10 measures, it does not yet have a clear budget and the central purpose is to reduce violence and murders, which ultimately means fighting drug cartels that operate on both sides of the border. . With special emphasis on the Sinaloa Cartel.

The measures adopted recently seek, in any case, to corner this criminal group.

A month ago the State Department also offered another $ 5 million reward for information leading to the capture of El Chapo's brother, Aureliano Guzmán.

At the end of November, his wife, Emma Coronel, was sentenced to three years in prison for the crimes of drug trafficking and money laundering.

The judicial battle against his children is the latest chapter in the war against drugs.

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