US, Mexico Governments Escalate Battle Against Drug Kingpin El Chapo Kyle Schmidlin - Inquisitr
go to original December 6, 2015

In this ten minute video we explain how Joaquin Guzmán Loera, better known as “El Chapo” or “Shorty” in Spanish, turned a start-up operation into a multinational criminal empire. For years he served as the CEO of the most powerful criminal organizations worldwide, the Sinaloa drug cartel. (Fusion)

In the months since his headline-grabbing escape from Mexico’s hyper-maximum security prison Altiplano, Sinaloa cartel boss Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera has been one of the world’s most wanted men. Now, the governments of both Mexico and the United States are intensifying their war against the drug kingpin.

Last week, Forbes reported that the U.S. Department of Treasury froze the U.S. assets of two of the Sinaloa cartel’s highest-ranking associates. One of the targets, Guadalupe Fernández Valencia, allegedly moves drugs and money for the cartel; the other, Jorge Mario Valenzuela, works for the cartel in drug distribution.

Treasury utilized the 1999 Kingpin Act, formally the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act, in its move against El Chapo. Violations of the Kingpin Act for any corporate entity – such as a bank that may be used by the cartel to launder money – can be stiff. Forbes reports fines for a corporation can be as high as $10 million.

The move to freeze financial assets comes just after the Mexican government seized a sizable amount of El Chapo’s personal assets. On Nov. 26, USA Today reported that the Mexican government “confiscated a total of 11 planes, eight vehicles and six houses belonging to the kingpin in the past five months.”

Such seizures likely don’t even put a dent in El Chapo’s total holdings. The Sinaloa cartel that El Chapo is the boss of is Mexico’s most powerful drug cartel, trafficking billions of dollars into the U.S. every year. Mexico lacks sufficiently strong asset seizure laws to really damage El Chapo and suffers from weak political will and too much corruption, according to USA Today.

Read the rest at Inquisitr

Related: People on the Internet Thought They Had Found 'El Chapo'... in a Music Video (The Huffington Post )

Related: El Chapo Is a Violent Murdering Criminal, Stop Glorifying Him (Breitbart)

El Chapo Prison Stay Might be Nicer Than Your Life (The Young Turks)

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