Ted Cruz Calls for $14 Billion Seized from ‘El Chapo’ to Fund Border Wall

Ted Cruz Calls for $14 Billion Seized from ‘El Chapo’ to Fund Border Wall

byBOB PRICE

Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) introduced a bill calling for the use of $14 billion seized from cartel drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman to be used to pay for the President’s border wall between the U.S. and Mexico.

“Fourteen billion dollars will go a long way toward building a wall that will keep Americans safe and hinder the illegal flow of drugs, weapons, and individuals across our southern border,” Senator Cruz stated, according to a statement obtained by Breitbart Texas from the senator’s office. “Ensuring the safety and security of Texans is one of my top priorities.”

The Texas senator said that leveraging criminally forfeited assets from El Chapo and other Mexican cartel members and drug dealers can “offset the wall’s cost and make meaningful progress toward achieving President Trump’s stated border security objectives.”

Senator Cruz introduced the Ensuring Lawful Collection of Hidden Assets to Provide Order (EL CHAPO) Act on Tuesday. “The U.S. Government is currently seeking the criminal forfeiture of more than $14 billion in drug proceeds and illicit profits from El Chapo, the former leader of the Sinaloa drug cartel who was recently extradited to the U.S. to face criminal prosecution for numerous alleged drug-related crimes, including conspiracy to commit murder and money laundering,” Cruz stated.

The Mexican government extradited the former Mexican drug kingpin in January, Breitbart Texas’ Ildefonso Ortiz reported. The move to an American prison cell followed months of court battles in Mexico and multiple escapes from prison by Guzman. As part of the agreement with Mexico, Guzman will not face the death penalty in the U.S. for his crimes. Prosecutors filed murder charges against the former drug lord in relation to the killings of a U.S. citizen and two relatives.

Article: http://www.breitbart.com/texas/2017/...d-border-wall/

Great idea. Where is the money, who had the money we seized it from, what banks, what investments, we need details to follow the money. It will tell Americans a lot about the breadth and depth of all this money that buys up our politicians, law enforcement, states and local communities, 501 C 3's and yes even ... churches ..... to keep those borders open, to keep illegal aliens inside the US, to prevent border barriers like fencing and walls. The cartels needs free flow of goods, money and people across the border to bring the drugs in, haul the money out and run the drug trade inside the US.

by BREITBART TEXAS
26 Apr 2017

Texas Senator Ted Cruz launched an online petition to rally support for his effort to use seized Mexican cartel funds to pay for the border wall between the U.S. and Mexico. The petition, “Build the Wall and Make El Chapo Pay for It,” seeks to support a proposed bill by the senator to do just that.

Specifically, the effort refers to Sinaloa cartel boss Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman and his roughly $14 billion in assets.

Readers interested in signing the online petition or viewing the effort can do so HERE.

“Fourteen billion dollars will go a long way toward building a wall that will keep Americans safe and hinder the illegal flow of drugs, weapons, and individuals across our southern border,” Senator Cruz stated, according to a statement obtained by Breitbart Texas from the senator’s office. “Ensuring the safety and security of Texans is one of my top priorities.”

The issue of a border wall, or more accurately, portions of a border wall, has been controversial in both the U.S. and Mexico. President Donald Trump promised that Mexico would pay for the costs of the wall, but has since backed away from such claims and changed his position to U.S. taxpayers footing the bill and Mexico paying it back eventually. Senator Cruz and his proposed “El Chapo” bill provide a means for the Trump Administration to keep its promise to U.S. taxpayers while also providing a means for Mexico’s corrupt elite to pay, rather than the majority of Mexicans who live under tyranny.

Breitbart Texas covered the proposed bill when the senator first announced it. Bob Price wrote:

The Texas senator said that leveraging criminally forfeited assets from El Chapo and other Mexican cartel members and drug dealers can “offset the wall’s cost and make meaningful progress toward achieving President Trump’s stated border security objectives.”

Senator Cruz introduced the Ensuring Lawful Collection of Hidden Assets to Provide Order (EL CHAPO) Act on Tuesday. “The U.S. Government is currently seeking the criminal forfeiture of more than $14 billion in drug proceeds and illicit profits from El Chapo, the former leader of the Sinaloa drug cartel who was recently extradited to the U.S. to face criminal prosecution for numerous alleged drug-related crimes, including conspiracy to commit murder and money laundering,” Cruz stated.

http://www.breitbart.com/texas/2017/...-el-chapo-pay/

. . . Hope said major international drug forfeiture cases in the past have reached into the tens or hundreds of millions of dollars, not billions. The government estimates also appear to be based on gross sales, without taking into account the cartel’s expenses for transport, security, bribes, storage and the like . . .
===============================


Cruz plan to seize drug-lord money to pay for border all faces big hurdles

By Kevin Diaz, Washington Bureau
May 1, 2017 Updated: May 1, 2017 7:27pm

WASHINGTON — With funding for President Donald Trump’s border wall languishing in Congress, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas has gained widespread media attention with a brash proposal to let “El Chapo” pay for it.

Cruz, Trump’s former rival in the Republican presidential primaries, has said there would be “justice” in using the Mexican drug lord’s illicit profits — estimated by prosecutors at $14 billion — to underwrite a physical barrier aimed at halting drug and human trafficking.

Best of all, it would fulfill Trump’s promise to make Mexico pay for it.

The plan, however, faces formidable legal and political obstacles that could tie up the money for years, even if the Mexican government and courts cooperated with the Trump administration, which is far from certain.

There’s also the question of tracing cash and tangible assets linked to Joaquin Guzman Loera, aka El Chapo, whose fortunes are believed to have plunged significantly since 2011, when Forbes magazine last estimated his net worth at roughly $1 billion.

Gone underground after multiple international manhunts, near misses and escapes, he also dropped off Forbes’ billionaire rankings as his true net worth and assets became too hazy to count.

That was until last May, five months after his recapture following a shootout with Mexican marines, when the Justice Department filed criminal forfeiture papers announcing its intent to seek some $14 billion in assets upon his conviction.

At the time, Guzman was still in Mexican custody, waiting to be extradited to the U.S., where he pleaded not guilty to charges of running a multibillion-dollar drug empire. He is awaiting trial in New York.

The $14 billion figure, the largest ever connected to Guzman, includes no public inventory of his assets. A Justice Department statement in January indicates that it is the sum of his Sinaloa Cartel’s narcotics sales in the U.S. and Canada between 1989 and 2014. Moreover, the government suggests, the “bulk” of the cash proceeds was smuggled back to Mexico.

“The $14 billion is a back-of-the-envelope calculation of how much drugs were traveling to the U.S. over the past 30 years, and assigning a portion of that to El Chapo,” said Alejandro Hope, a security analyst in Mexico City. “To put it gently, it’s more of an art than a science.”

Hope said major international drug forfeiture cases in the past have reached into the tens or hundreds of millions of dollars, not billions. The government estimates also appear to be based on gross sales, without taking into account the cartel’s expenses for transport, security, bribes, storage and the like.

“The whole thing is absolutely ludicrous,” Hope said. “There’s no way El Chapo has $14 billion. This is political grandstanding.”

The government’s asset forfeiture program has averaged less than $2.5 billion a year for the past decade, which includes recoveries from the massive Bernie Madoff investment fraud case. Seizures of the size needed to pay for a border wall, variously estimated between $14 billion and $20 billion, would be unprecedented.

“I do not know how, in El Chapo’s case, these issues will be sorted out, but I’m confident that there will be nothing close to $14 billion to be found or recovered,” said the University of Miami’s Bruce Bagley, an expert on Mexico’s drug cartels. “It has all been spent or hidden.”

For their part, Guzman’s lawyers say any estimate of his wealth is unproven. “The government is seeking forfeiture of $14 billion but has yet to demonstrate that Mr. Guzman has any assets at all,” his federal defender, Michelle Gelernt, said in a statement.

For the time being, Guzman is being held in isolation and represented by court-ordered federal defenders at public expense.

A spokesman for Cruz said Monday that he is relying on the figures provided by prosecutors.

Cruz, responding to the border wall stalemate, filed his border wall funding bill in the Senate last week, touting it on numerous television appearances and in election fundraising pitches to show that “we keep the promises made to the voters last November.”

Inventively named the Ensuring Lawful Collection of Hidden Assets to Provide Order (El CHAPO) Act, it would reserve any forfeited money from Guzman’s case for security measures along the border, including a wall.

Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council, called it an “amazing idea.” Even skeptics of wall funding such as U.S. Sen. John Cornyn of Texas have offered Cruz praise. “It’s creative, you’ve got to give him that,” Cornyn said.

But a number of security analysts say that whatever El Chapo’s fate in court, the bulk of his unknown assets, whatever they are, are likely to remain where they are: south of the border.

“In practice, the arresting country usually gets to keep 80-90 percent of the confiscated funds,” said Bagley, the cartels expert.

Mexico, which played a major role in Guzman’s capture, is already at the front of the line. “In general, the United States has in place an asset-sharing agreement with Mexico that allows each country to share forfeited assets with the other if the other country gives assistance relevant to the forfeiture,” said Peter Carr, a Justice Department spokesman.

Given the politics of the border wall, which Mexico opposes, negotiations over any split of forfeited assets could get tricky, with Mexico in the driver’s seat.

“In asset-forfeiture sharing, ‘possession is nine-tenths of the law,’” said security consultant David Gaddis, a former chief of enforcement operations at the Drug Enforcement Administration. “If the government of Mexico is holding assets of Joaquin Guzman Loera’s organization, they can do with it what they want.”

The DEA and the Treasury Department have identified hundreds of businesses in Mexico that are suspected of laundering money or otherwise working with Guzman’s organization. They include gas stations, restaurants and even day care centers. Though the U.S. “Kingpin Act” bars American companies from doing business with them, actually tracing their suspected drug connections and confiscating their assets would mean going through a tortuous legal process in Mexican courts that could take years, or even decades, to unwind.

The U.S. government also would have to get in line with legitimate private creditors, some with valid business claims.

“We’re talking about property that’s outside the United States,” said Steven Kessler, a leading asset forfeiture attorney in New York. “It requires the assistance of the country where the assets are located.

“You add to that the lovely relations the government has with Mexico, with the statements that ‘all this money is going to be used, in effect, to punish you’ and my guess is we’ll get the same treatment as we give,” Kessler said.

http://www.expressnews.com/news/loca...r-11113095.php

So if the money and/or assets were really known which it appears they weren't, they've gone back to Mexico and aren't available anyhoo. Back to tariffs on imports and remittances.

Massive amounts of drug money is being seized everyday - understand some goes to running our departments but a % could go towards the wall.

mexico should get zero 000000 - charge them a fee for our manpower, surveillance, etc to confiscate the garbage coming from their side of the border AND TAKE A % ON THE BILLIONS $$$$ SENT IN REMITTANCES FROM MONIES EARNED HERE till we can be rid of them all.

If we have a couple more years of them here before E-verify is enacted coast to coast, use it to build the wall. They will know too, their taking of our jobs and monies for social services with their baby booms IS PAYING FOR THE WALL that they can look back at after they are deported.