‘El Chapo’ ordered hit on employee, witness says

NEW YORK — After a fugitive employee of Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman Loera tried in vain to bribe a top Mexican military official millions of dollars to let the drug lord on the lam live “in peace,” he saw red and ordered her killed, his former right-hand man testified Tuesday.

Alex Cifuentes, Guzman’s former secretary, told jurors on his third day on the stand about his ex-boss’s growing impatience hiding out in the city of Culiacan in January 2013.

He said Guzman ordered Cifuentes’ assistant, Andrea Velez Fernandez — who ran a modelling agency in Mexico City — to bribe an unidentified government official in the hopes authorities would ease up on the intensifying manhunt.

“(Velez) would introduce female friends to the general ... for private parties,” Cifuentes said in court, adding that Guzman offered to pay her $1 million to bribe the general at one of the gatherings.

“She was not successful. The general hated Joaquin very much,” Cifuentes said Tuesday. “(Guzman) was angry and he said that she was a liar. He ordered her killed.”

Cifuentes said Velez Fernandez ultimately managed to evade execution.

Guzman, 61, is on trial in federal court in Brooklyn where he has pleaded not guilty to a 17count indictment that charges money laundering, conspiracy, firearms and international distribution of cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin and marijuana.

Jurors also heard tape of the witness lamenting after Guzman avoided capture in 2012.