US law enforcement officials arrested two top leaders of the powerful Sinaloa cartel, one of the most dominant criminal organisations in Mexico.
The two operatives, Ismael Zambada García and Joaquín Guzmán López, are among the most powerful drug traffickers in Mexico and command massive transnational cocaine and fentanyl businesses that move narcotics into the United States, Europe and elsewhere.
The Sinaloa cartel they help lead is one of the two biggest drug trafficking groups in Mexico, and is among the most sophisticated and dangerous criminal enterprises in the world. Both men were in custody in El Paso, Texas.
“Fentanyl is the deadliest drug threat our country has ever faced,” US attorney general Merrick Garland said in a statement. “The justice department will not rest until every single cartel leader, member, and associate responsible for poisoning our communities is held accountable.”
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Zambada García (76) who is known as El Mayo, has been pursued by the US government for years as a co-founder of the Sinaloa cartel and has been charged in several federal indictments stretching back more than two decades.
Guzmán López is a son of notorious crime boss Joaquín Guzmán Loera, known as El Chapo, and is said to have been elevated to a leadership role in the cartel along with his three brothers after the extradition of his father to the United States in 2017. His brother Ovidio Guzmán López was arrested in Mexico and extradited to stand trial in Chicago in September.
Joaquín Guzmán López is expected to appear in the coming days in US District Court in Chicago. It remains unclear at this point where Zambada García will be prosecuted.
Zambada García has never spent time in jail, according to the US government, unlike his top ally El Chapo, who was extradited to the United States, convicted in Brooklyn federal court in 2019 and sentenced to life in prison on drug conspiracy charges.
The arrest was a victory for US federal investigators in the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration and Homeland Security Investigations, which have for years been chasing the top ranks of the Sinaloa cartel.
While the successful case against El Chapo was a major step in that effort, US authorities were always rankled by their inability to secure a case against Zambada García.
They had captured Zambada García extensively on wiretaps over the years and had come very close to apprehending him just before El Chapo was taken into custody.
El Chapo cultivated the media and attained something of a global celebrity status, famously sitting for an interview with actor Sean Penn that was published in Rolling Stone magazine.
Zamabada García, by contrast, has always been a quieter and more old-school criminal figure. He has long been less flashy than El Chapo, content to live a simple, almost rustic life in his compound in Sinaloa, known as El Alamo.
Behind the scenes, Zambada García, known as a pragmatist at heart, has been in communication with US federal officials for the last three years at least, discussing the terms of his potential surrender, according to five people briefed on the matter.
Zambada García suffered a brutal public betrayal during El Chapo’s trial: His own son testified for the prosecution, offering an explosive and detailed account of every aspect of the cartel’s sprawling criminal enterprise. His son, Vicente Zambada Niebla, had been previously arrested by Mexican authorities and extradited to the United States in 2010.
At trial, Zambada Niebla demonstrated a remarkable mastery of the inner workings of the cartel empire, revealing how his father helped traffic tons through a vast network of smuggling routes and money laundering schemes.
His father’s bribery budget was as high as $1 million a month, he said, and included payments to an army general and a military officer who once served as a personal guard to Mexico’s former president, Vicente Fox. - New York Times.
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