In addition to the 1985 murder of DEA agent Enrique ‘Kiki’ Camarena, the U.S. government accuses Mexican drug lord Rafael Caro Quintero of having committed 10 crimes between 1980 and 2018, related to drug trafficking. Since 2013, he has issued a reward of up to $20 million for information leading to his arrest.
Until his recapture Friday in Sinaloa by elements of the Navy, he was one of the most wanted capos by the DEA and by Mexico, after he was a fugitive since 2013.
According to U.S. court documents seen by the media, New York-based prosecutor Richard Donoghue accuses Caro Quintero — alias “RCQ,” “Cesar,” “Don Rafa,” “El Señor,” “El Canoso” or “El Viejo” — of having distributed thousands of kilos of marijuana, cocaine and methamphetamine, among other illegal substances, to the U.S. In addition, it accuses him of illegal possession of weapons as part of an organization dedicated to drug trafficking.
In this same indictment, the U.S. government also accuses caro Quintero’s nephew, an alleged member of a faction of the Sinaloa Cartel, Ismael Quintero Arellanes, ‘el Mayel’ or ‘el Fierro’, of conspiring to manufacture and distribute illegal drugs.
‘El Mayel’ was arrested in January 2020 in Culiacán, Sinaloa, and was considered to be the cartel’s logistical support chief.
In the details of the indictment, it is specified that the US government accuses the alleged Mexican drug traffickers of having manufactured and distributed at least 5,900 kilos of marijuana in the US, 4,500 kilos of cocaine and 22 kilos of methamphetamines.
“Caro Quintero operates a vast network responsible for the manufacture and import of narcotics, especially multiple amounts of heroin, methamphetamine and marijuana from Mexico to the United States and elsewhere,” the document said.
“In addition, the Caro Quintero cartel is also responsible for the transfer of multiple quantities of cocaine from South and Central America and Mexico to the United States. The vast majority of the drugs trafficked by the cartel were imported into the United States, where the drugs were consumed. Caro Quintero’s cartel used corruption as its method to achieve its goals,” the Justice Department document adds.
The @SEMAR_mx shared a video of the moment of Caro Quintero’s capture. He reported that the drug trafficker was found in thickets by “Max,” a canine element “whose training of
search and rescue allowed its location.”https://t.co/Y6oWrNPvVz pic.twitter.com/Ym9RjCUPJN
— Animal Político (@Pajaropolitico) July 15, 2022
Violence and money laundering
The US justice system points out that the operations of the Caro Quintero cartel generated “millions of dollars” of profits for the capo.
“Usually, money from the sale of drugs was physically transported from the United States to Mexico through clandestine means,” he says.
As for the structure of the Caro Quintero cartel, the US justice system reports that the Mexican drug lord was the one who had “the last decision” in the criminal organization regarding drug trafficking “and activities related to money laundering,” as well as activities related to corruption.
Then, in the structure are “security chiefs, who protect caro Quintero’s leadership in the cartel,” “the plaza bosses, who control certain territories for the organization,” the “transporters,” such as skippers of maritime vessels, aviation pilots and truckers, “who transported drugs from Colombia to Mexico and from there to the United States,” and the “money launderers” who laundered the proceeds of drug sales in the United States.
As for the cartel’s hitmen, the U.S. Department of Justice notes that they carried out “numerous acts of violence, including murders, assaults, kidnappings and acts of torture.”
“The cartel leaders are the ones who directly ordered these acts of violence to promote the prestige, reputation and position of the cartel vis-à-vis its criminal rivals, as well as to preserve the power and territory of the Caro Quintero cartel.”
The recapture of the capo
Caro Quintero, the 69-year-old Sinaloan drug trafficker who came to be nicknamed in the 80s as a ‘narco of narcos’ and one of the criminals who gave rise to the large drug cartels in Mexico, was reapprehended by the Navy this Friday, in Sinaloa. The recapture comes just days after President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador met in Washington, D.C., with his U.S. counterpart, Joe Biden.
Born in La Noria, Sinaloa, he was the most wanted fugitive by the DEA, after in 2013 he was the dean of the country.The federal court in Jalisco granted him a controversial injunction in the case of the murder of U.S. agent Enrique Camarena, arguing that the victim did not hold any diplomatic position, so he ordered the immediate release of the capo.
A year and a half later, the Mexican authorities again ordered the arrest of the founder of the Guadalajara Cartel, along with Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo and Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo, ‘Don Neto’. However, it was too late: Caro Quintero was already at an unknown point.
After almost a decade of his controversial release, he was recaptured on Friday and US authorities announced that they will seek his “immediate extradition”.
Statement from Attorney General Merrick B. Garland on Capture of Rafael Caro-Quinterohttps://t.co/EmIsetLvvm
— Justice Department (@TheJusticeDept) July 16, 2022
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