‘El Gordo' Martinez to Evidence 'Chapo's' Sinaloa Leadership

On Monday, Miguel Angel Martinez, one of the closest coordinators of Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman, once drug-lord of the Sinaloa Cartel, testified against his former boss at his trial taking place in New York, revealing his leadership role and cooperation sustained with a U.S. Navy pilot.

RELATED: 
'El Chapo' Trial Witness: We Paid Off Mexico Ex-Security Chief

El Gordo went from pilot to one of the most trusted lieutenants and reported directly to 'Chapo.'  

Martinez has become the key asset in the investigation as he is being used as the prosecutor’s tool to evidence that Guzman was the leader of the cartel, according to El Pais.

The collaborator also gave valuable information regarding the cartel’s illicit import-export business, such as price structures, shipping routes, and money-laundering schemes, as well as code names used by the traffickers to avoid being identified and revealing aspects of their schemes during radio communications.

“He told me we were missing 10 minutes of gasoline, then seven, then five,”Martinez, alias ‘El Gordo’ — the ‘fat one’ — relayed a Hollywoodesque story involving collaboration with a U.S. Navy pilot to conduct an emergency plane landing on a vessel with two dead engines, carrying several tons of Los Angeles-bound cocaine, on a hidden land-strip in Mexico.

For example, jet fuel was code-named ‘wine’ and airplanes ‘girls.’

The relationship among the two men had grown to be one based on affection, as 'Chapo' related to El Gordo some of the details of his precarious boyhood, “He was a poor person, he didn’t have anything to eat, and that is why he got involved in the drug trade.”