US Treasury Department officials on Monday imposed sanctions on the leaders of a global fentanyl trafficking organization based in Mexico.
The Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control ordered a freeze on the US assets and properties of José Ángel Rivera Zazueta, Nelton Santiso Aguila and Jason Antonio Yang López for acquiring chemicals to manufacture and traffic illicit fentanyl and other synthetic drugs to the United States.
In a statement, the office said the action was the result of continued efforts by the US Drug Enforcement Agency and other agencies, in conjunction with the Mexican government, to disrupt the importation and distribution of illicit fentanyl, which is fueling the opioid crisis in America.
“Illicit fentanyl has caused unprecedented overdose deaths in the United States, with the majority of these drugs coming from Mexican cartels, including the Sinaloa Cartel, which use precursor chemicals from East Asia,” said the Treasury Under Secretary for Terrorism. and Financial Intelligence, Brian. E.Nelson.
“The United States will continue to work with the government of Mexico to disrupt this deadly trade,” he said.
Rivera Zazueta’s drug manufacturing and trafficking organization, based in Culiacán, Sinaloa, and Mexico City, operated on a global scale with nodes in the United States, South and Central America, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia.
Rivera Zazueta imported precursor chemicals from China into Mexico, authorities said, which were then used to make synthetic drugs, including fentanyl, ecstasy, crystal methamphetamine, 2C-B and ketamine, the statement said.
Rivera Zazueta has also worked closely with Shanghai Fast-Fine Chemicals, a Chinese chemical shipping company that the FAC office designated in 2021 for shipping various precursor chemicals, often under false labels, to drug trafficking organizations in Mexico for the illicit production of fentanyl destined for US markets.
In addition, Rivera Zazueta is responsible for moving large amounts of cocaine from Colombia to the United States, Spain, Italy, Guatemala, Mexico and other countries in Europe and Central America.
The DEA says it seized more than 50 million fentanyl pills and 10,800 pounds of fentanyl powder in 2022, enough of the drug to kill more than the entire population of the United States.
In 2021, the most recent year for which figures are available, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported 106,000 overdose deaths. Two-thirds of those deaths were caused by synthetic opioids like fentanyl, up 22% from 2020, while heroin overdose deaths fell by nearly a third.
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