The restrictions also apply to three transportation companies that may have smuggled drugs
by Mexico News Daily
The United States government has imposed economic sanctions on a Sinaloa Cartel-affiliated drug trafficking organization (DTO), three of its alleged members and three companies.
The U.S. Department of the Treasury (UST) said in a statement Wednesday that its Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) had designated the Valenzuela DTO and its presumed leader Juan Francisco Valenzuela Valenzuela in accordance with a 2021 executive order — “Imposing Sanctions on Foreign Persons Involved in the Global Illicit Drug Trade.”
OFAC also designated “two Mexican nationals and Valenzuela DTO members, Héctor Alfonso Araujo Peralta and Raúl Rivas Chaires, as well as three Mexico-based transportation companies … for having engaged in, or attempted to engage in, activities or transactions that have materially contributed to, or pose a significant risk of materially contributing to, the international proliferation of illicit drugs or their means of production,” UST said.
The department said that the Valenzuela DTO was originally established as a transportation cell but evolved into a “sophistical network that became invaluable to Sinaloa Cartel leadership.”
It said the organization was run by three Valenzuela siblings but Juan Francisco is “the last remaining sibling involved” due to the arrest of his brother and sister by U.S. authorities in 2020 and 2021, respectively.
UST said that “under the umbrella of the Sinaloa Cartel, the Valenzuela DTO is involved in the importation and transport of multi-ton quantities of illicit drugs, including methamphetamine, heroin and fentanyl, from Mexico to the United States.”
Juan Francisco Valenzuela, Araujo and Rivas all face trafficking charges in the U.S. but remain at large.
As a result of the sanctions imposed Wednesday, “all property and interests in property of the designated individuals and entities that are in the United States or in the possession or control of U.S. persons must be blocked and reported to OFAC,” UST said.
It also said that “persons that engage in certain transactions with the individuals and entities designated today may themselves be exposed to sanctions or subject to an enforcement action.”
“… Today’s action is part of a whole-of-government effort to counter the global threat posed by the trafficking of illicit drugs into the United States that causes the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans annually, as well as countless more non-fatal overdoses,” UST said.
Brian E. Nelson, undersecretary of UST’s Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, said that the Valenzuela DTO “fuels the ongoing drug epidemic we face in the United States.”
“… Starving this network of resources will help deprive the Sinaloa Cartel of critical support it needs to traffic its dangerous illicit drugs,” he said.
Formerly led by imprisoned drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, the Sinaloa Cartel is one of Mexico’s two most powerful criminal organizations, the other being the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG)
Texas Governor Greg Abbott last month designated both cartels as terrorist organizations.
Mexico News Daily
In other news from Mexico:
Most Mexicans want military to remain involved in public security: poll
The poll also garnered opinions about the trustworthiness of Mexico’s different public security institutions
Almost three-quarters of Mexicans agree with the government’s plan to continue using the armed forces for public security tasks until 2028, a new poll indicates.
A constitutional bill extending the military’s involvement in public security by four years has already been approved by Congress and will become law once it has been ratified by a majority of Mexico’s state legislatures.
A survey conducted by the polling company Enkoll for the newspaper El País and broadcaster W Radio found that 73 percent of just over 1,000 respondents agreed with the plan to keep the military on the streets until 2028.
A similar number – 72 percent – said they agreed with the armed forces having control of customs, airports and border crossings, while 62 percent of those polled expressed support for the military’s construction of infrastructure projects such as the Felipe Ángeles International Airport and the Maya Train railroad.
The results are welcome news for President López Obrador, who has relied heavily on the military since taking office in late 2018 and seems intent on increasing the role it plays in public life.
Conducted face-to-face at people’s homes between October 14 and 17, the poll also garnered opinions about the trustworthiness of Mexico’s different public security institutions. As has traditionally been the case, the navy was deemed the most trustworthy security force, with 54 percent of respondents saying they trusted it a lot and an additional 16 percent expressing “some” confidence in the nation’s marines.
The army, National Guard and state police forces were all seen as less trustworthy, although a majority of respondents indicated they had a lot or at least some confidence in the first two institutions. However, only 13 percent of those polled said they trusted state police a lot while an additional 20 percent told Enkoll they maintained some confidence in their officers.
In a more telling revelation, two-thirds of respondents said they had little or no trust in their state police forces.
Asked whether they agreed with López Obrador’s assertion that corruption could be avoided by using the military to build public infrastructure projects, almost six in 10 respondents said they did. Just over one in 10 said they very much agreed with the claim while 47 percent indicated more restrained concurrence with the president.
Although Mexican newspapers have recently been filled with reports detailing the contents of a massive trove of emails and documents stolen from the Ministry of National Defense’s IT system by the Guacamaya hacking group, 71 percent of respondents said they hadn’t heard about the security breach and subsequent leak.
López Obrador downplayed the seriousness of the security breach, asserting that he didn’t expect any negative consequences from it, while Defense Minister Luis Cresencio Sandoval declined to meet with lawmakers to discuss the hacking incident. That response was neither particularly popular or unpopular among those polled, with 41 percent of respondents praising the government’s handling of the issue and 34 percent criticizing it. An additional 25 percent declined to comment on the government’s response or said they didn’t know anything about it.
A clear majority did, however, assert that the army’s digital security personnel “must assume responsibility” for the hacking of the army’s servers, a breach that resulted in the theft and subsequent leaking of six terabytes of data.
The media’s obtention of confidential and sensitive information has led to the publication of a huge number of revelatory reports, including ones on López Obrador’s health problems, the government’s plan to create an army-run commercial airline, a soldier’s sale of weapons to a criminal organization and the Mexican military’s planning and operational shortcomings.
