Mexico has extradited Ovidio Guzman, one of the sons of Joaquin Guzman, the famed drug lord nicknamed “El Chapo,” to the United States, American authorities announced. There he is accused of drug trafficking, money laundering and criminal offenses.
Like father, like son. Like his father “El Raton,” Ovidio Guzman, who was extradited in 2017, one of “El Chapo’s” four sons, Joaquin Guzman, was extradited to the United States, according to American authorities. He was charged with drug trafficking and money laundering and was also said to have “ordered the murders of informants, a drug trafficker and a Mexican singer who refused to sing at his wedding,” according to AFP.
This extradition “testifies to the importance of cooperation between the American and Mexican governments to curb drug trafficking,” emphasizes the US Department of Homeland Security and thanks Mexico.
“Today, U.S. and Mexican law enforcement authorities successfully turned over Ovidio Guzman Lopez, one of El Chapo’s sons who was charged with drug trafficking, money laundering and other violent crimes, to the U.S. Department of Justice,” the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said in a statement.
Ovidio Guzman was arrested by Mexican authorities in early January during a bloody operation in the city of Caliucan, Mexico. Ten soldiers and nineteen suspected criminals were killed in fierce gunfights between police forces and gunmen in this northwestern Mexican city.
“Heads and hot blood”
“American authorities had put a $5 million bounty on his arrest and accused him and his brother Joaquin Guzman Lopez of monitoring laboratories in Sinaloa state that produce methamphetamine,” according to AFP.
His father “El Chapo,” Joaquin Guzman, the founder of the Sinaloa Cartel, is currently serving a life sentence in the United States. Until his extradition to the United States in 2017, he was considered one of the most powerful drug traffickers in the world.
Ovidio Guzman is considered the leader of the “Menores”, a faction of his father’s cartel.
He is the most famous son of “El Chapo,” and a song called “Soy el raton” (I am the mouse) was even written in his honor. He is described as a chef with “a lot of brains”, “hot-blooded” and a lover of luxury cars.
Before his extradition, he was held in a prison in Altiplano, central Mexico.
The Sinaloa Cartel is the target of the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA). The latter accuses him of being the main player in the fentanyl trade. This particularly powerful synthetic opiate, 50 times more powerful than heroin, is responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of people each year in the United States.