The Justice Department announced charges against leaders of the Sinaloa cartel Friday. Cartel gunmen besieged the Mexican city of Culiacan in January after a senior member was arrested in a police raid. File Photo by Juan Carlos Cruz/EPA-EFE
April 14 (UPI) — The Justice Department on Friday announced wide-ranging charges against high-ranking members of the Sinaloa drug cartel, infamous for having once been lead by Joaquin Guzman, better known as “El Chapo.”
The Justice Department said Guzman’s sons, Ivan Guzman Salazar and Ovidio Guzman Lopez, known as the “Chapitos,” assumed leadership roles in the Mexican cartel after Guzman’s arrest in 2016 and during his current incarceration in a U.S. maximum security prison.
The announcement comes days after the Biden Administration declared their intention to create a “global coalition” to “prevent illicit drug manufacturing, detect emerging drug threats, disrupt trafficking, address illicit finance, and respond to public safety and public health impacts.”
“Today, the Justice Department is announcing charges unsealed in the Southern District of New York, Northern District of Illinois, and District of Columbia, against several leaders of the Sinaloa cartel, a transitional drug trafficking organization based in Sinaloa, Mexico, and its facilitators across the globe,” the Justice Department said in a press release Friday.
The Justice Department says the Chapitos used cargo planes, private aircraft, submarines, container ships, fishing ships, railways and tunnels to smuggle drugs.
“Families and communities across our county are being devastated by the fentanyl epidemic. Today’s actions demonstrate the comprehensive approach the Justice Department is taking to disrupt fentanyl trafficking and save American lives,” Attorney General Merrick Garland stated in the release.
In January, cartel gunmen besieged the Mexican city of Culiacan after a law enforcement raid captured Ovidio Guzman Lopez.
“Today’s indictment send a clear message to the Chapitos, the Sinaloa Cartel, and criminal drug networks around the world that the DEA will stop at nothing to protect the national security of the United States and the safety and health of the American people,” Garland said.
According to a senior White House official speaking on background, the Justice Department’s actions align with the president’s commitment expressed during the North America Leaders’ Summit in January alongside President Lopez Obrador of Mexico.
Those commitments include stepped-up efforts to prosecute drug traffickers, to disrupt their supply of precursor chemicals, and to prevent the trafficking of drugs across the U.S.-Mexico border.