One of the sons of Mexican drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, Ovidio Guzmán Lopez, pleaded not guilty in American courts on Monday to several counts of drug trafficking, money laundering and weapons possession.
Ovidio Guzman Lopez, 33, extradited Friday from Mexico, which had held him for more than eight months, pleaded not guilty to all charges against him in federal court in Chicago, North, the U.S. Department of Defense said . Release Justice in a Press.
According to the American authorities, he is accused of having surrendered himself to a “criminal drug trafficking enterprise” from May 2008 to October 2021. He is accused of being involved in the importation of cocaine, heroin, methamphetamines and marijuana into the United States.
The defendant was held in custody without the possibility of bail, the Justice Department said.
After the arrest of “El Chapo” in 2016 and his extradition to the United States in 2017, who was previously considered the most powerful drug trafficker in the world, Ovidio Guzman Lopez and his three brothers took control of the Sinaloa cartel – to the detriment of the her father’s former employee, according to the same source.
When he was captured by Mexican authorities in January, a few days before a visit by US President Joe Biden, ten soldiers and 19 suspected criminals were killed in fierce exchanges of fire in Culiacán in the northwest of the country.
The extradition of Ovidio Guzman Lopez comes a few days after the release of “El Chapo’s” wife, Emma Coronel Aispuro, 34, who was sentenced to three years in prison in the United States in November 2021.
Joaquin Guzman was sentenced to life in prison in New York in July 2019 and is serving his sentence in a maximum security prison in Colorado.