OILY DRUG PLOT
Say Chapo aimed to carry coke on tankers
El Chapo once tried to add state-owned Mexican oil ships to his international cocaine smuggling pipeline, but the deal ultimately ran out of gas, a witness testified Wednesday.
Colombian druglord Jorge Cifuentes (photo) returned to the witness stand at Chapo’s drug-trafficking trial in Brooklyn for a second day and described an alleged 2007 meeting between Chapo, his fellow Sinaloa drug boss Damaso Lopez and two corrupt officials from Mexico’s public petroleum company Pemex.
He said the meeting in the mountains near Culiacan focused on a plan to have cocaine from Ecuador transported in tanker ships to the coast of Michoacan, just south of Guadalajara.
The negotiations with the executives ultimately fell through, so Chapo, whose real name is Joaquin Guzman, devised a backup plan, Cifuentes said.
Instead of oil barges, the group decided to use shark fishing boats originating in Peru that would travel to international waters and load up with Ecuadoran cocaine delivered by Cifuentes’ crew on speedboats.
The shark boats would then travel to waters off Mexico and unload the drugs to tuna fishing boats, Cifuentes testified.
Cifuentes said Chapo was footing the bill for the elaborate operation, including bribes allegedly paid to Capt.
Telmo Castro, the head of the Ecuadoran Army.
He said Castro began charging Chapo $100 a kilo transported by his army vehicles, but the price was worth it.
“Army trucks aren’t searched, so there’s no danger of losing the cocaine,” he said.
A $600,000 entry in his accounting records represented a payment to Castro for the trafficking 6,000 kilos of cocaine, he confirmed. Cifuentes testified in detail about other entries in the ledgers, including something listed as “cellular inhibitors.” He said the expense involved technology used to disable devices during top-secret cartel meetings, so “there’s no way anyone can tape it or send out anything.”
Other expenses related to a secret hatch in a warehouse kitchen that led to an underground storage room big enough to hide 10 tons of cocaine, he said. He said the space was sealed with hydraulic jacks and could be opened only with a remote.
It was installed to “protect Don Joaquin’s cocaine from you guys,” Cifuentes said, referring to law enforcement.
The government claims Chapo, 61, was the billionaire mastermind behind Mexico’s powerful Sinaloa drug cartel before his arrest in 2016 and extradition to the U.S. last year.
Chapo has pleaded not guilty to more than a dozen charges involving conspiracy, firearms, money laundering and the trafficking of cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine and marijuana.