U.S. cracks down on Mexican drug traffickers family

Donna Leinwand Leger, 5 p.m. EDT June 12, 2013

U.S. freezes assets of drug kingpin

Story Highlights

  • Rafael Caro Quintero is serving 40 years in Mexican prison for kidnapping, murder of DEA agent
  • U.S. says Caro Quintero's family launders drug money at Guadalajara businesses, including resort spa
  • Treasury Department is freezing the assets of 18 people and 15 businesses tied to cartel



The U.S. government froze the assets Wednesday of 18 people and 15 businesses linked to a Mexican drug trafficker who has operated a drug cartel in Guadalajara since the 1970s.
The people and businesses are tied to Rafael Caro Quintero, who was convicted in 1985 of the kidnapping and murder of Drug Enforcement Administration Special Agent Enrique Camarena and is serving a 40 year prison sentence in Mexico, Adam Szubin, director of the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control, said Wednesday. The federal government designated Caro Quintero a drug "kingpin" in 2000.
The Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act prohibits U.S. citizens and legal residents from engaging in business with anyone designated a kingpin under the act and freezes the kingpin's assets.
Szubin called Caro Quintero "one of the godfathers" of Mexican drug trafficking.
Quintero "used a network of family members and front persons to invest his fortune into ostensibly legitimate companies and real estate projects in the city of Guadalajara," Szubin said. "What they are using these companies to do is anything but innocent."
The actions Wednesday target Caro Quintero's wife, three sons, a daughter and a daughter-in-law, and his personal secretary, Szubin said. The businesses include gas stations, a bath and beauty products store, a shoe company and a resort spa called Hacienda Las Limas, he said.
Treasury also froze the assets of members of the Guadalajara-based Sanchez Garza family, which it says launders money for the Carol Quintero trafficking operation and Juan Jose Esparragoza Moreno, know as El Azula, Caro Quintero's cartel partner. Szubin says the family launders money through real estate development, construction and pool companies and a restaurant called Los Andariegos.
"There are many people out there in the narcotics trade who think just because they don't touch the drugs, they are immune," DEA Special Agent Carl Pike, assistant special agent in charge of DEA's special operations division. "We will find you, identify what you're doing and disrupt the lifestyle you have gained from drug trafficking."

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/06/12/us-freeze-drug-kingpin-assets/2416191/