If drug trafficking were a legal trade, all Mexicans would be amazed at what the cartels have achieved as transnational corporations. Today they make so much money that they equal the worldwide operations of General Motors and Ford Motor Company in revenue… combined!
Not only that, synthetic drugs make them infinitely richer. The cost-benefit analysis is blown out of proportion. It costs the cartels less than 10 cents to produce a fake fentanyl-laced pill, which sells in the United States for between $10 and $30 per pill.
The Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco New Generation operate in 45 countries.
Today, in May 2023, their business is not focused solely on drugs made from natural substances that are still arriving from South America. His new big vein is synthetic drugs. According to the United States Senate, in 2019 the illegal, natural and synthetic drug market surpassed the profits of these two cartels to more than 39,000 million dollars annually.
Today that income, with fentanyl, has multiplied several times and could reach 67,000 million dollars annually. The perspective is lost because it is difficult to have all the details of their operations in the 45 countries, but the DEA is working on it and the 45 governments are cooperating. It’s just a matter of time.
The latter is the main thing. That is why the two strongest cartels in Mexico are today in the crosshairs of the United States government. The DEA is hot on their trail by operating against them at 23 field divisions, with 241 national offices and nine forensic laboratories. Internationally, the DEA has nine overseas field divisions with 93 overseas offices. The DEA’s strong national and international presence is mapping and targeting all international networks.
According to intelligence shared with Congress, the two Mexican cartels are the largest in the Americas, but they are not the only ones.
That leads us to the analysis of how and how much money is generated in the illegal drug market and that revealed that its most important partners are not only in Mexico but also in China. That relationship has grown to evade the rules for the movement of massive amounts of cash, and that has already created a money-laundering financial submarket whose center of operations is not in Mexico, but in China. Later right here I will reveal the details.
Following the money trail, the United States is uncovering daily those who assist them in transporting and smuggling drugs into the United States, and those in Mexico who receive money from them to protect them with political power.
The enormous number of deaths caused by fentanyl made many American parents realize that the future of their children is in the hands of Mexican drug traffickers. That resulted in enormous pressure on Congress in Washington to open lawmakers’ eyes to the fact that millions of American lives depend on what drug distribution networks invent daily in the form of new drugs and new products.
The war is spreading to the Internet and the social networks through which cartel associates distribute their wares.
From all quarters, Joe Biden is drawing fire for his reluctance to vigorously confront fentanyl crooks in Mexico and China.
The power of cartels to move their distribution chains.
The DEA formed two strike groups; one that penetrated the Sinaloa Cartel, another equal to that of Jalisco. That has many months of having happened. The information from these operations revealed the sophisticated and diversified way they have to move their products.
The 334 offices of the Anti-Drug Administration have been closely observing and knowing the operations of the two cartels for months. The results show that they are organizations with associates that have specific functions in territories previously conquered and later demarcated as their own.
The DEA today has worldwide analysis of the networks and their members.
The strength of the cartel leaders is equal to the size and extent of their mercenaries that are not just Mexican. In each country there are cells of local people with assigned functions and territories to bring their products to the final consumer.
These cells have highly trained, heavily armed ex-military and ex-police officers who know how governments move and how governments don’t move, and who also know how and who to bribe and when that doesn’t work, how to blackmail and intimidate.
From this infiltration by anti-narcotics agents came the accusations last week against 28 members and associates of the Sinaloa Cartel in Mexico, Guatemala and China. Included in these accusations are leaders, suppliers, intermediaries, smugglers and money launderers in various countries. The charges against these people are tied to the manufacture and trafficking of most of the fentanyl that enters the United States. Mexico already has specific extradition requests for more than a dozen suspects on Mexican soil.
For the first time, the DEA is fighting the partners of the cartels inside the US
The DEA’s Operation “Overdrive,” which is using digital intelligence methods, has identified and is dismantling several drug distribution networks operating in the areas with the highest rates of violence and deaths from drug intoxication in the United States. Local police are identifying criminal networks and their members.
Phase one of “Operation Overdrive” includes 34 locations in the United States. Phase two is focused on 57 more locations. Drugs enter the entire border with Mexico. The United States already knows that the Sinaloa Cartel has a presence in 15 of the 32 Mexican states. The Jalisco New Generation in 21 of those 32 states. Dominance in some of those states is obviously shared.
Fentanyl, “Made in the USA”
Fentanyl is still produced in Mexico, but lately it has been easier for the cartels to receive the precursors and chemicals in the United States, and to manufacture the fentanyl here. The DEA, FBI and various local law enforcement agencies are daily invading private homes in expensive neighborhoods where drugs are discreetly manufactured and prepared for local distribution. This has been extensively documented in reports on TV Azteca, Mexico. Operations have been shown from Phoenix, Arizona, to the most expensive neighborhoods in Manhattan, New York.
The cartels have distribution bases, local “hubs”, where the drug from Mexico is received and from there it is distributed throughout the country. Distributors are in Southern California, Colorado, Georgia and Illinois.
Chinese laundries
The Sinaloa and Jalisco cartels found partners in China who were happy to launder their money. This created a financial underworld, and a ghost banking system in China.
Before there were many sectors and many hands laundering money from the cartels. Today the largest amount is laundered by the Chinese, and that created an illicit network of global money and multiple methods using crypto money in millions of operations originated by drug money. The United States Department of the Treasury is doing the global tracking.
Chinese money laundering organizations operate all over the world, disguising their laundering by hiding in the huge trade, which requires huge movements of cash. The system is ideal for facilitating the exchange of millions of dollars and other currencies.
With this several things are achieved; International money laundering operations are simplified and the purchase of chemical precursors used in the manufacture of drugs is expedited.
In addition, the scheme fulfills the desire of the Mexican cartels to repatriate drug profits to the Mexican banking system. In addition, Chinese millionaires who are restricted from taking money out of China manage to transfer mountains of money to bank accounts all over the world.
Today the United States government already knows how and who acquires US dollars owned by the Mexican cartels and how they supply their clients in China.
Mexican cooperation
DEA chief Anne Milgram came under heavy pressure this week from members of Congress to label Mexico a Narco-state. She resisted pressure to publicly disclose the lack of cooperation with her agency. It is clear that President Joe Biden prefers to seek the cooperation of the Mexican government in the fight against the cartels.
But it is clear that everything has a limit, and that friendship and society cannot be faked forever, without there being signs that that friendship and that society… They really exist.
