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The United States files charges against 'Los Chapitos' and 25 other members of the Sinaloa Cartel

2023-04-14T22:48:29.574Z


The Justice Department requests non-reviewable life imprisonment for Iván Archivaldo, Jesús Alfredo and Ovidio Guzmán


The Department of Justice has announced this Friday the presentation of charges against 28 members of the powerful Mexican cartel of Sinaloa, among them the three sons of the famous drug trafficker Joaquín El Chapo Guzmán, in the framework of an extensive investigation into fentanyl trafficking.

The indictments announced Friday charge Guzmán's three sons, known as the Chapitos, who have earned a reputation as the cartel's most violent and aggressive faction: brothers Iván Archivaldo and Jesús Alfredo Guzmán Salazar and Ovidio Guzmán López, for those for whom the prosecution requests non-reviewable life imprisonment.

Together with their accomplices, the Chapitos are accused of mounting operations to flood the United States with fentanyl in order to supply the "streets full of drug addicts", in the expression of Iván Archivaldo Guzmán Salazar collected by the Department of Justice.

In the charges presented this Friday, the Chapitos, the main lieutenants and leaders of the Sinaloa cartel, are accused of different crimes of fentanyl and arms trafficking and money laundering;

the alleged manufacturers and distributors of fentanyl;

the directors of his violent armed security apparatus;

to the sophisticated money launderers who repatriate the Sinaloa cartel's drug proceeds to Mexico;

and multiple suppliers of precursor chemicals in China to make fentanyl,

“Los Chapitos and the Sinaloa cartel allegedly reaped hundreds of millions of dollars in profits by flooding the United States with fentanyl,” the Justice Department says.

Nearly 107,000 Americans died from drug overdoses in the United States in 2021. “It kills more Americans ages 18 to 45 than car accidents, than cancer, than covid.

And the number of children under the age of 14 who are dying has increased at an alarming rate," said the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Anne Milgram, who announced the charges at a press conference this Friday. along with Attorney General Merrick Garland and other federal prosecutors.

Milgram has had a very tough intervention and has explained the process that has led to the step taken this Friday: “At the DEA we decided to act proactively against the criminal network most responsible for the fentanyl that floods our communities.

We analyzed our data and the answer was clear.

Most of the fentanyl circulating in the United States comes from the Sinaloa cartel.

The DEA and our law enforcement partners took down the former leader of the Sinaloa cartel, El Chapo Guzmán, who is now serving a life sentence in a United States prison for his crimes,” he said.

“But the sons of El Chapo, Ovidio, Iván and Alfredo, known as Los Chapitos, became the new leaders of the Sinaloa cartel.

They inherited a global drug empire, and made it more ruthless, more violent, more deadly, and used it to spread a new poison, fentanyl...the deadliest drug our country has ever faced.

They are responsible for the massive entry of fentanyl into the United States.

As a direct result of their actions, we have lost hundreds of thousands of American lives,” he added.

The head of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Anne Milgram, this Friday in Washington.MICHAEL REYNOLDS (EFE)

Seven defendants are in custody pending extradition proceedings: Ovidio Guzmán López was arrested in Mexico;

Carlos Omar Féliz Gutiérrez and Silvano Francisco Mariano, alias “Rayo”, were arrested in Colombia;

Sergio Duarte Frías, Ana Gabriela Rubio Zea and Humberto Beltrán Cuen, alias “Don Chino”, were arrested in Guatemala;

and Anastacio Soto Vega, alias “Tachin”, was arrested in Greece.

In addition, Julio Marín González was previously detained in the United States.

For all defendants, the Department of Justice is seeking sentences of life imprisonment.

However, for the six leaders of the most prominent cartel, he claims that they are not reviewable.

These are the three Chapitos plus what he considers three top leaders of the cartel hitmen: Óscar Noé Medina González, alias “Panu”, Héctor Isidro Pérez Salas, alias “Nini”, and Jorge Humberto Figueroa Benítez, alias “27″, who give the orders, according to the Department of Justice, to "kidnap, torture and kill anyone who opposes the Chapitos."

For another 16 defendants, the Department of Justice demands a minimum of 40 years of sentence and for the remaining six, at least 10 years.

The different statements of charges presented, especially the longest, with 65 pages, show photographs of seized drug packages, wads of high-denomination bills and authentic arsenals of weapons.

The documents explain the defendants' mode of operation.

The prosecution maintains that the cartel employs qualified chemists (“cooks”) who are experienced in synthesizing fentanyl from precursor chemicals sourced from China.

In a single day, a cartel cook can make more than 100,000 pills using presses, according to reports.

In some cases, drug dealers have verified the purity of their fentanyl by testing it on other people.

For example, around 2022, Pérez Salas and Figueroa Benítez experimented on a woman they initially planned to shoot by repeatedly injecting doses of fentanyl until she died, one of the documents explains.

Another test showed that the product was lethal and still the cartel sent it to the United States.

In most cases, the cartel's fentanyl enters the United States hidden in secret compartments of cars, camouflaged among cargo in trailers, hidden in luggage on planes, concealed through false documentation in shipping containers. or hidden in the bodies of

drug

mules .

Once it reaches the United States, traffickers maintain warehouses and a US wholesale distribution network for further retail sale in small quantities to consumers.

In 2022 alone, the DEA seized more than 57 million fentanyl pills and about 6,000 kilos of fentanyl powder, the equivalent of approximately 410 million life-threatening doses of fentanyl.

The cartel uses increasingly sophisticated and daring methods to launder fentanyl proceeds from the United States to Mexico.

Over the course of about two years, a single trafficker assisted in the laundering of more than $24 million in proceeds, providing cartel money launderers in the United States with approximately $15 million and sending approximately $9 million to Mexico. in cash hidden in secret compartments in cars.

Other suspected cartel money launderers, including Mario Alberto Jiménez Castro, alias “Kastor,” and Sergio Duarte Frías, have used cryptocurrency wallets to launder hundreds of thousands of dollars in fentanyl proceeds for the cartel.

El Chapo was convicted in 2019 of running an industrial-scale smuggling operation.

At Guzmán's trial, prosecutors said evidence collected since the late 1980s showed he and the cartel that killed him made billions of dollars from trafficking tons of cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine and marijuana into the United States. .

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faith of errors

In an initial version, the sons of El Chapo were identified on two occasions as Iván Archivaldo, Jesús and Alfredo, when the correct one is Iván Archivaldo, Jesús Alfredo and Ovidio.

Source: elparis

All news articles on 2023-04-14

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