Global Courant 2023-04-15 11:06:27
It was already very difficult not to assume that a dirty business such as the transfer of the drug fentanyl or its precursors did not have ramifications among criminal groups in Guatemala. Yesterday the United States government officially accused the Sinaloa cartel of conspiring to manufacture and enter said opioid into its territory. The links, alliances and also rivalries between mafia organizations in Guatemala and Mexico have been known for a long time, whose merchandise used to be cocaine and heroin, now surpassed in profit by the aforementioned synthetic product that was used as an anesthetic and today is an addictive plague that leaves more than one hundred thousand deaths a year on US soil.
This phenomenon revives the alert about the corrupting and co-opting potential of these criminal gangs, which have huge ill-gotten resources, with which they seek the collaboration of surreptitious allies in the State. If drug trafficking has already involved mayors, candidates, the military, and officials—several of whom have been imprisoned, prosecuted, or extradited—the fentanyl boom, much more profitable, implies a danger to national and hemispheric security.
China is reported to be the main origin of said drug, whether it is manufactured or its ingredients. Said government claimed to have established controls to block that industry, but the United States and Mexico point to the persistence of hundreds of clandestine factories. In fact, faced with accusations by US authorities, the president of Mexico, Andrés López, sent a letter to his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, to demand greater control over fentanyl. He responded with a sink, declaring that there was no transfer, and he blamed the crisis only on the US.
The US Attorney General charged 28 people with conspiracy to smuggle fentanyl. Among them are the sons of Chapo Guzmán —including Ovidio Guzmán, arrested on January 5 by the Mexican government, which has not yet extradited him—, Chinese citizens, as well as two Mexicans associated with the Sinaloa cartel and arrested on March 18 last in Guatemala, at the request of the US, Sergio Antonio Duarte Frías and Humberto Beltrán Cuen, alias Don Chino. Together with them, the Guatemalan Gabriela Zea, alias Gaby, was arrested, accused of using her business contacts in Continental China to transport precursors of the opioid in question.
In each electoral year, the need to combat the infiltration of drug money in electoral campaigns for mayors, councils and even the presidency is reiterated with growing evidence. In several localities of the country there are right now candidates for positions who mount onerous propaganda paraphernalia without there being any clarity about the origin of the funds or their financiers. For this reason, the TSE must require timely and detailed reports on campaign expenses from all parties. You should review them, with special attention to coastal, port and border municipalities.
In 2018, former presidential candidate Manuel Baldizón was captured for laundering money from drug trafficking; In the middle of the previous campaign, in 2019, the presidential candidate Mario Estrada, from the extinct Unión del Cambio Nacional, was arrested for drug transfer. Both confessed to crimes. But the risk persists and that is why the detection of drug caches is key, but also of all asset laundering. Only until March 31, there were 1,633 alerts from the Special Verification Intendancy for suspicious transactions. Not all of them will correspond to drug money, but there will undoubtedly be many that do.
Dangers of fentanyl reach Guatemala
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