Washington, Aug 9 (EFE).- The United States imposed sanctions this Wednesday on the Mexican drug traffickers Félix Núñez, alias “el Changuito”, and the brothers Alfonso and René Arzate, whom it accuses of being part of the powerful Sinaloa Cartel and participating in fentanyl trafficking.
“Today’s action targets key individuals responsible for facilitating the trafficking of deadly drugs like fentanyl into the United States, where it wreaks havoc in our communities,” Treasury Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Brian Nelson said in a statement.
According to the Government of Joe Biden, El Changuito is a “powerful and violent leader” of the Sinaloa Cartel in the city of Manzanillo, in the state of Colima, whose port serves as a gateway for drugs, such as cocaine from Colombia, and of the precursor chemicals from Asia that are used to make fentanyl, which then ends up in the United States.
El Changuito, one of the founders of Los Ántrax, the armed wing of the Sinaloa Cartel, was arrested by the Mexican authorities in 2014, but in 2017 he escaped from a prison in Culiacán, the capital of Sinaloa, and remains a fugitive to date.
The Arzate brothers, according to the US Treasury, manage drug trafficking operations in the Tijuana area, in the Mexican state of Baja California, where “they are involved in trafficking large amounts of drugs, such as fentanyl.”
The United States accuses them of being “extremely violent” and of having carried out “kidnappings and executions for the Sinaloa Cartel.” Both are charged in a federal court in California.
The sanctions, which block their assets in the United States and prohibit commercial transactions with them, were imposed in coordination with the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) of the Government of Mexico, the Treasury reported.
Fentanyl is a powerful synthetic opioid fifty times stronger than morphine and the cause of the worst drug crisis in the history of the United States, where last year more than 70,000 people died from overdoses of this substance.
According to the US, the Mexican cartels of Sinaloa and Jalisco Nueva Generación produce fentanyl in clandestine laboratories using chemical products and cosmetics that they legally acquire from China and then traffic and distribute in US territory. EFE
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