Federal prosecutors in Chicago fighting to get El Chapo trial

Mexican Federal Police said that in March 2015, the USA government asked Mexico to issue an arrest warrant with the objective of extradition – citing alleged collaboration in drug trafficking and money laundering between Fernández Valencia and Guzman’s Sinaloa Cartel.

Guzman has boasted to actor Sean Penn in a Rolling Stone magazine article: “I supply more heroin, more methamphetamine, cocaine and marijuana than anybody else in the world”.

One interesting snag, as the Times points out, is that Mexico nearly certainly won’t agree to send El Chapo across the border unless the United States promises not to seek the death penalty.

In addition, high-ranking Sinaloa operatives, including the son of El Chapo’s partner, Ismael Zambada Garcia, have been extradited to Chicago where they’re awaiting trial.

The US Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of NY will probably prosecute El Chapo (which means Shorty) if the drug lord ever makes it to US soil states PIX 11 News.

“All the jurisdictions that have cases have made their play to DOJ”, the source said.

Mexican Attorney General Arely Gomez said that “there are indications” Castilo may have used money from El Chapo to finance her Honor tequila brand.

Meanwhile, authorities detained the kingpin’s alleged financial manager Guadalupe Fernandez Valencia, known as “La Patrona” or “The Boss”, in Culiacan, the capital of Sinaloa, where El Chapo was recaptured in January after a months-long manhunt.

In July, though, El Chapo famously escaped from a maximum-security Mexican prison through a tunnel. His controversial escape allegedly involved a number of Mexican jail officials.

The said indictment orders forfeiture of El Chapo’s properties, “including but not limited to…a sum of $14 billion in United States currency”.

Former Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Cramer said Lynch is likely to select Chicago or NY as the venue for an El Chapo trial. First Mexico and the USA have to agree to the terms of El Chapo’s extradition, most notably that there will be no death penalty.

“The fact she knows intimately the prosecutors and the case, I think it would be naïve to think it wouldn’t be a factor”, Cramer said.