- Writing
- BBC News World
image source, US State Dept.
Ovidio Guzmán López is known by his alias the Mouse.
The US Justice Department indicted 28 members of Mexico’s powerful Sinaloa cartel on Friday, including three sons of drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, in a sprawling investigation into fentanyl trafficking.
US Attorney General Merrick Garland said Chinese chemical and pharmaceutical companies are involved in the operation.
Garland announced the charges this Friday along with the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Anne Milgram, and other federal prosecutors.
Among the accused are three sons of Guzmán, known as the Chapitoswho have earned a reputation as the most violent and aggressive faction of the cartel.
Ovidio Guzmán López, one of his sons, was detained in Mexico and is awaiting extradition proceedings, federal prosecutors in Manhattan said.
His father was convicted in 2019 of running an industrial-scale smuggling operation.
“They know they are poisoning and killing Americans. They just don’t care because they make billions of dollars doing it,” Milgram said, referring to Guzmán’s children. “His greed is outrageous and has no limits”.
In addition to the cartel leaders, Garland noted that alleged chemical suppliers, laboratory managers, fentanyl traffickers, security leaders, financiers and arms dealers are also charged.
“We are going to go in search of the entire network, from precursors, to imports into Mexico, to manufacturing, to weapons, to those who launder money, to distribution in the United States,” he added.
Federal prosecutors have unsealed three separate indictments bringing charges against more than two dozen people residing in Mexico, China and Guatemala. Eight of them are in custody.
image source, Getty Images
Involved in China
Prosecutors also charged four Chinese company owners who allegedly supplied chemical compounds to the cartel.
The US Treasury Department also imposed sanctions Friday on China-based chemical companies Wuhan Shuokang Biological Technology Co Ltd and Suzhou Xiaoli Pharmatech Co Ltd.
Garland said he held meetings with his Mexican counterparts this week and they will work together to “continuously attack this enemy” and seek the extradition of the remaining defendants. He also called on China to take further action.
“The government of the People’s Republic of China must stop the uncontrolled flow of fentanyl precursor chemicals leaving China,” he said.
In 2021, nearly 107,000 people died from drug overdoses in the United States.
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