U.S. sanctions Mexican Sinaloa cartel members and companies over fentanyl trafficking

WASHINGTON — The Biden administration on Tuesday imposed sanctions on 13 members of Mexico’s highly effective Sinaloa cartel and 4 Sonora, Mexico-based companies accused of trafficking fentanyl and different medicine into the United States.

The newest motion follows a collection of measures taken this 12 months in opposition to members of the Sinaloa cartel, money couriers and cartel fraud schemes.

Included within the sanctions are a supervisor of cartel operations in Nogales who oversaw the trafficking of multi-ton portions of medicine, authorities stated, in addition to members of his household and his associates. Also sanctioned are a restaurant, stone and mining corporations and an import-export agency.

The sanctions minimize them off from the U.S. banking system, minimize off their means to work with Americans and block their U.S. belongings.

The Treasury Department’s undersecretary for terrorism and monetary intelligence, Brian Nelson, stated that the U.S. “will aggressively pursue all who are complicit operators and facilitators of these illicit fentanyl networks.”

The Treasury “will continue to use its authorities to expose and isolate those who profit from deadly fentanyl sales in the United States,” Nelson stated.

Fentanyl, a strong opioid, is the deadliest drug within the U.S. right this moment.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that drug overdose deaths elevated greater than sevenfold from 2015 to 2021. More than 100,000 deaths a 12 months have been linked to drug overdoses since 2020, and about two-thirds of these are associated to fentanyl.

Mexico and China are the first sources for fentanyl and fentanyl-related substances trafficked immediately into the U.S., in response to the Drug Enforcement Administration, which is tasked with combating illicit drug trafficking. Nearly all of the precursor chemical compounds which are wanted to make fentanyl come from China. And the businesses that make the precursors routinely use pretend return addresses and mislabel the merchandise to keep away from being caught by regulation enforcement.

In October, President Joe Biden’s administration introduced a sweeping collection of indictments and sanctions in opposition to Chinese corporations and executives blamed for importing the chemical compounds used to make the lethal drug.