The saga of one of history's most notorious drug lords, Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzmán, recently got a whole lot more interesting as he's gone on trial. Recently it was revealed that he reportedly operated a cocaine train from Mexico to New York City, with his cartel bringing in somewhere between $500 million to $800 million on that route alone. Now it's been reported that the Mexican drug lord reportedly sourced meth ingredients from the sister of a notorious Colombian drug trafficker.
On Monday, Jorge Milton Cifuentes Villa returned to the witness stand to detail Chapo's dealings. The New York Daily News reports that Cifuentes said Chapo sought a deal with his sister Dolly and brother Alex after Cifuentes declined to offer Chapo the ingredients to manufacture meth he had requested from him, claiming that Chapo bought ephedrine, a precursor to meth, from the two siblings.
"Don Joaquín knows I [didn’t] like to fuck around with ephedrine,” Cifuentes explained in court. Initially he refused to sell meth due to its damaging effects, but he eventually changed his mind in the name of money. "Hunger made me change my mind," he said.
Chapo has continued to claim innocence in the face of all the charges against him, which include distribution of cocaine, meth, heroin, and weed.
Previously, as Rolling Stone reports, a recording of a call between Chapo and a suspected representative of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (aka FARC) from May 2010 detailed the negotiations between the former's cartel and the latter's organization, placing the drug lord directly in hot water. Reportedly, Chapo agreed to buy two tons of cocaine with cash while buying another four tons on credit, planning to sign over some properties as collateral.
It gets weirder, however, as Chapo went so far as to offer to send his nephew to Colombia as a hostage, just so the FARC guerilla group could be sure he would hold his end of the deal and pay for the other four tons. The recording is reportedly the first time jurors have heard explicit evidence of Chapo's drug operation, with Jorge Milton Cifuentes Villa offering a testimony confirming Chapo's involvement.
Cifuentes himself has confessed to providing weapons for a death squad that was fighting against the FARC, who Chapo was reportedly dealing with.
