Mexico football star among 22 sanctioned for drug trafficking

Legendary Mexican footballer Rafael Marquez Alvarez and a well-known band leader are among 22 people sanctioned for alleged ties to a drug trafficking organisation, the US treasury department has announced.

The sanctions are the result of a multi-year investigation of the drug trafficking organisation allegedly headed by Raul Flores Hernandez, the department said. It will also sanction 43 entities in Mexico, including a football team and casino.

It is the single largest such designation of a drug trafficking organisation ever by the US office of foreign assets control.

Marquez, 38, is a former defender for Barcelona, Monaco and New York Red Bulls who currently plays for the Mexican football club Atlas in Guadalajara and is captain of the Mexican national team.

Marquez denied having any links to drug traffickers.

“I categorically deny any kind of relation to this organisation,” Marquez said. “Today is my most difficult match; I will try to clear all of this up.”

Flores Hernandez allegedly operated independently in the northern city of Guadalajara but maintained alliances with the Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation cartels. The US attorney general’s office said he was arrested on 20 July and is being held while his extradition is pending.

The Mexican attorney general’s office also seized related assets, including the Grand Casino near Guadalajara.

Mexican prosecutors said they were working closely with US authorities on the investigation and added that Marquez came voluntarily to the attorney general’s office to provide a statement.

Mike Vigil, former chief of international operations for the US Drug Enforcement Administration, said the 64-year old Flores Hernandez has been in the business since the 1980s.

“He is extraordinarily crafty in the way he strategises and the way that he navigates between cartels,” Vigil said.

But, the former agent added, Flores Hernandez has remained a mid-level drug trafficker, never forming what one would call a cartel, and of late had aligned himself with Nemesio Oseguera of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel.

Vigil said Flores Hernandez had a real talent for laundering drug proceeds by setting up front companies.

US federal drug trafficking indictments against Flores Hernandez were returned in March in Washington and the southern district of California. .

Marquez is famed as a tenacious defender whose crunching tackles have sometimes seen him sent off in high-profile matches.