Fugitive Mexican ‘world’s most powerful drug baron’
The fugitive Sinaloa cartel leader also got a boost from Mexican actress Kate Del Castillo, who said she believed in Guzman more than in the government.
It was the latest in an odd series of accolades for Guzman, who was included this year on the Forbes list of the world’s richest people, with an estimated fortune of $1 billion (€784,000).
The US embassy in Mexico City issued a statement saying that three of Guzman’s alleged associates had been hit with sanctions under the Kingpin Act, which prohibits people in the US from conducting businesses with them and freezes their US assets.
The two Mexican men and a Colombian allegedly aided Guzman’s trafficking operations. The statement quoted Adam J Szubin, director of the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), as saying the move “marks the fourth time in the past year that OFAC has targeted and exposed the support structures of the organisation led by Chapo Guzman, the world’s most powerful drug trafficker”.
Guzman, who escaped from a Mexican prison in 2001 in a laundry truck and had a $7m (€5.5m) bounty placed on his head, has long been recognised as Mexico’s most powerful drug baron.
Authorities said his Sinaloa cartel has recently been expanding abroad, building international operations in Central and South America and the Pacific.
Del Castillo, who played a female drug trafficker in the TV series La Reina del Sur (Queen of the South), offered grudging praise for Guzman in a posting on the social media site Twextra.
“Today, I believe more in El Chapo Guzman than in the governments who hide truths from me,” she wrote.
Since his escape, Guzman’s legend has grown daily, as he evaded capture, eliminated rivals and sold billions of dollars worth of drugs across the border.
Meanwhile, the National Action Party, which won office by pledging to restore law and order in a country tired of the corruption that marred the 71-year reign of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, has become more and more bogged down in the drug war.
President Felipe Calderon staked his reputation on rooting out the cartels, but the army-led struggle has cost more than 47,000 lives in five years, spooking tourists and investors alike.
Officials who have tracked Guzman say it is one thing to locate him, but quite another to capture him.
Like late Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar, Guzman has a reputation as a protector of his heartland in Sinaloa, a rugged region that the state still struggles to penetrate, where news of approaching strangers quickly reaches him.
