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News > Latin America

El Chapo is the World's Number 1 Drug Criminal, Says DEA

  • The DEA has a bounty of US$5 million for information leading to the arrest of Joaquin

    The DEA has a bounty of US$5 million for information leading to the arrest of Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman. | Photo: Reuters

Published 11 November 2015
Opinion

The U.S. government has listed the Sinaloa Cartel leader as their greatest criminal threat. The DEA says he controls the U.S. illegal drugs market.

The U.S. government has listed Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman as their greatest criminal threat while the DEA said the Sinaloa Cartel's boss is the world's number one drug trafficker, making unprecedented revelations of the extent of control El Chapo and other drug cartels have in the country.

“El Chapo Guzman is the world's number one drug criminal. El Chapo has facilitated a lot of American deaths through the violence of people that work for him,” DEA spokesperson Rusty Payne told Forbes.

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In a recently declassified DEA document dated July 2015, the anti-narcotics agency said the Sinaloa Cartel is the Mexican drug organization with the most significant presence in the U.S.

“The Sinaloa Cartel are dominant along the West Coast, through the Midwest, and into the northeast,” the DEA added in the report.

Graphic: DEA

However, the DEA expressed concern regarding the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, or CJNG, which was initially financed by El Chapo to take deal with Los Zetas drug cartel. Many news versions affirm the CJNG broke away from the Sinaloa Cartel after Ignacio “Nacho” Coronel was killed in a shootout with military forces in 2013.

Graphic: DEA

Coronel – the uncle of El Chapo's current wife – was the head of the CJNG until his death. However, in the end, according to various sources, all the cartels collaborate when it comes to crossing drugs into the United States and their distribution across the U.S. territory thereafter.

Stratford Global Security says the CJNG’s days are numbered, but the DEA disagrees, saying it is a “cartel of significant concern, as it is quickly becoming one of the most powerful organizations in mexico.”

The DEA report also highlighted grave concern over the fact that “Mexican traffickers are expanding their operations to gain a larger share of eastern U.S. heroin markets.”

Graphic: DEA

The heroin distribution and sale was originally controlled by Asian drug traffickers, but all tha is changing as the Sinaloa Cartel controls increased poppy plant cultivation in Colombia and Mexico.

In the Golden Triangle – a mountainous region that extends across the northern states of Sinaloa, Durango and Chihuahua – there are approximately 12,000 hectares of with poppy plant plantations, According to Mexican authorities.

In July, the U.S. government reported a sharp 400 percent increase in heroin related deaths, and that consumption was also on the rise.

The U.S. Center for Disease Control said the use of heroin among women and people ages 18 through 25 have at least doubled in recent years.

El Chapo Guzman has become a sort of mythical character due to his spectacular escapes from maximum security jails in Mexico and his “cinematic” evasion on foot and with a leg injury despite being surrounded by hundreds of marines, including special forces.

In July 11, he managed to escape for a second time from a maximum security jail through a mile-long tunnel in a case that has exposed the high-level complicity of Mexican authorities with drug cartels.

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El Chapo is said to be one of Mexico's most powerful and influential figure based on the extent of his payoffs and “donations” to officials such as President Enrique Peña Nieto and politician Manlio Fabio Beltrones, who is a former governor of Sonora and a lawmaker who has been mentioned as the ruling party's potential presidential candidate for 2018.

VIDEO: El Chapo Tunnel Discovered at the Border with the US

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