Phoenix narcotics agents lauded

They target alleged supporters of cartel

U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents in Phoenix have been credited with developing intelligence leading to economic sanctions levied against alleged supporters of a Mexican drug cartel boss.

The U.S. Treasury Department noted the Phoenix agents’ work this week in naming three people and three business entities in Mexico now prohibited from doing business in, or with anyone from, the United States because of alleged ties with Sinaloa Cartel boss Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada Garcia.

Authorities allege that a Mexican attorney and the widow and daughter of a lieutenant to Zambada Garcia created and/ or operated a water park, a shopping center and a cattle ranch in the Mexican state of Sinaloa as “front companies” to launder drug proceeds.

Jose Antonio Nuñez Bedoya, Tomasa Garcia Rios and Monica Janeth Verdugo Garcia are the latest to be blacklisted by the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, which imposes economic sanctions or trade restrictions against countries and people in order to promote U.S. foreign

policy and national security.

The idea behind the efforts targeting drug kingpins is to “starve these traffickers of their assets and eventually put their global criminal networks out of business,” said Doug Coleman, special agent in charge of the DEA’s Phoenix Division.

“The Sinaloa Cartel cannot hide behind front companies like a water park or agricultural business,” Coleman said. “We are working with OFAC to expose these traffickers’ front companies for what they really are: not legitimate businesses but illegal enterprises that fuel the drug trade, its violence and corruption.”

More than 1,300 people and business entities on the Treasury Department’s Specially Designated Nationals List have been linked to recognized drug kingpins. The list is a function of the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act.

Implemented in 1999, the act was designed to deny foreign narcotics traffickers, related businesses and their operatives access to the U.S. financial system. The act prohibits all trade and transactions between the traffickers and U.S. individuals or companies — financial institutions, for example — and allows the government to freeze related assets within U.S. jurisdiction.

A violation of the Kingpin Designation Act can result in a maximum of 30 years imprisonment and $10 million in fines.