El Chapo’s wife jailed for drug trafficking

THE wife of the jailed Mexican drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán was sentenced to three years in prison yesterday in the US.

Emma Coronel Aispuro, who was jailed for drug trafficking and money laundering, married the ruthless drug baron on her 18th birthday and readily pleaded guilty after her arrest in February this year.

Coronel, 32, a former beauty queen who had twin nine-year-old daughters with Guzman, apologised in court. “I express my true regrets for any and all harm I have caused,” she told Washington DC district court in Spanish. “I am suffering because of the pain that I caused my family.”

The judge said she would also pay $1.5million (£1.1million) in a restitution deal agreed before the hearing.

Coronel had a key role in helping her husband escape from a Mexican prison in 2015. He was recaptured and extradited a year later to the US, where he was convicted in 2019 of drug trafficking, conspiracy, murder, kidnapping and other charges, and sentenced to life in prison.

Prosecutors described her as being uninvolved in the core business of his Sinaloa cartel, which shipped heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine into the US, according to the justice department.

“The defendant was not a leader, organiser, boss or other type of manager,” Anthony Nardozzi said. “Rather she was a cog in a very large wheel of a criminal organisation.”