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Cruz: Pay for wall with El Chapo’s assets

Does Ted Cruz read Prairie Pundit?

Back in February PP posted,

The government is trying to seize the assets of el Chapo estimated to be $14 billion. That is nearly two-thirds of the price of the wall right there. Mexico should go along with this because it would defund the criminal insurgency that is killing their culture. It would have the potential of being a win-win deal.

Now Sen. Cruz Introduces the EL CHAPO Act. BILL RESERVES BILLIONS IN POTENTIAL ASSETS FORFEITED AS A RESULT OF THE CRIMINAL PROSECUTION OF JOAQUIN ARCHIVALDO GUZMAN LOREA “EL CHAPO” AND OTHER DRUG LORDS TO PAY FOR BORDER SECURITY

The U.S. Government is currently seeking the criminal forfeiture of more than $14 billion in drug proceeds and illicit profits from El Chapo, the former leader of the Sinaloa drug cartel who was recently extradited to the U.S. to face criminal prosecution for numerous alleged drug-related crimes, including conspiracy to commit murder and money laundering.

“Fourteen billion dollars will go a long way toward building a wall that will keep Americans safe and hinder the illegal flow of drugs, weapons, and individuals across our southern border,” said Sen. Cruz.

Cruz tweeted,

Not only El Chapo’s assets but also those of his associates,

One cooperator, Juan Carlos Ramirez-Abadia, or “Chupeta,” 54, was a leading supplier of cocaine to Sinaloa and BLO through Colombia’s Norte del Valle cartel. He directed the production of business ledgers and was also prosecuted by Goldbarg. DEA agents helped obtain “the forfeiture of hundreds of millions of dollars” of Ramirez-Abadia’s purported billion-dollar fortune, U.S. authorities said when he was extradited in 2008 and remains under U.S. indictment.
. . .
Mayo’s son, Vicente Zambada Niebla, 41, agreed not to contest the forfeiture of nearly $1.4 billion — including cash, real estate, businesses, vehicles and other property — and cooperate with U.S. authorities while pending sentencing of 10 years to life in prison, a federal plea deal made public in 2014 in Chicago showed.

And then there are his relatives, who are living high off the hog.

Back in 2012 the U.S. Treasury Department put financial sanctions on El Chapo’s wife and son

The department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control said that it had designated María Alejandrina Salazar Hernández and Jesus Alfredo Guzmán Salazar, 26, under the U.S. Kingpin Act, which bars American citizens from dealing with them, and allows authorities to freeze their assets in the U.S.

Forbes looked into the assets amount last January (emphasis added),

The 33-page indictment against El Chapo, filed in 2016 at the U.S. Eastern District of New York, does not dissect the $14 billion. It simply says that upon conviction, the U.S. will seek forfeiture of any property or contractual rights derived from the continuing criminal enterprise, “including but not limited to at least approximately a sum of money equal to $14 billion in United States currency.”
. . .
In February 2014, OFAC issued a chart identifying 288 companies involved in Guzmán’s money laundering operations that had been blacklisted by OFAC between 2007 and 2014. The Guzman-linked companies, mostly located in Mexico, covered a broad range of areas including real estate, gas stations, construction and trucking companies, and furniture stores. Under the so-called “Kingpin Act,” American companies and individuals are prohibited from doing business with foreign company flagged by OFAC.

Gaddis said that the hard facts that back up the government’s assertion of the $14 billion figure lay in the reporting of DEA files, but they will only be accessible when they are made available to Guzman’s defense as discovery material during pre-trial proceedings.

Even half that amount would help.

Over in Mexico, a PAN congressman claims the assets  total US$161billion and belong to Mexico,

On Wednesday Congressman Jorge Ramos Hernández, from the National Action Party (PAN), claimed Guzman’s fortune amounts to at least $16 billion and must be ceded to Mexico to restore the damages caused by the trafficker’s illicit activities.

Related:
Via JC, Senator Ted Cruz proposes the El Chapo Act, enabling 14 billion dollars worth of assets from El Chapo and other drug lords to fund the border wall

UPDATE
Linked to by Silvio Canto. Thank you!

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Mexico: The dancing ‘dipu-tables’

Puerto Vallarta PAN legislative-strategy meeting:

Video Rocks Mexican Opposition Party
Online Publication Shows Lawmakers From Conservative PAN at Party With Scantily Clad Women

The four-minute video was published this week by Reporte Indigo, a muckraking online publication known for taking on public corruption and politicians of all stripes. The publication’s publisher, Ramón Alberto Garza, said in an interview that the video’s newsworthiness rests in the question of whether the party was paid for with public funds. The PAN officials in the video, none of whom dispute its authenticity, say it wasn’t.

Mr. Garza didn’t reveal where his publication obtained the video, in which a chuckling man can be heard shouting, “The Viagra is going to run out.”

Here’s Garza’s interview, in Spanish,

Garza points out that one of the men caught hot-handed is the man in charge of managing the money allotted to the PAN funds from public funds.

It’s not the first time PAN members were caught copping a grope:

Brazilian police in late June arrested two PAN officials and two other Mexican men for allegedly groping a woman on a street corner after Mexico’s World Cup loss to Holland, then beating her husband when he tried to intervene. The men have been fired from their jobs with a Mexico City district government and remain jailed in Fortaleza, Brazil, charged with assault.

Paco Almaraz did a burnt-out unit skit on them,

Post re-edited for clarity.

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Mexico: No more Pact

The leftist Partido de la Revolución Democrática (Party of the Democratic Revolution, or PRD) has pulled out of the Pact for Mexico, creating an acute crisis (link in Spanish), according to Mexican daily El País.

But how much of a crisis is it?

The Pact for Mexico, created in 2012 by then-new president Enrique Peña Nieto’s Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI), the PRD, and the Partido Acción Nacional (National Action Party, or PAN) ended 15 years of gridlock in the fractious congress,

allowing Mr. Peña’s administration to secure passage of wide-ranging bills on telecommunications, tax increases and education.
…
Congress is taking up the issue next week. But lawmakers from the PAN and the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, are expected to rewrite the president’s bill to give private oil companies a bigger role in the state energy sector, including contracts that allow them to share oil production. The president’s August initiative called only for sharing the profits from the oil, but not the oil itself.

“If they insist on an energy reform that privatizes Mexico’s oil income, the government is going to generate a situation of enormous social and political instability,” said PRD president Jesús Zambrano in an interview. “We’ll have a very hot Christmas, we’ll launch protests on all fronts.”

Together, the PAN and PRI have the two-thirds majority in Congress required to pass the proposed constitutional changes for the energy overhaul. And the president has already passed most of his major initiatives under the pact.

Mr. Peña Nieto regretted the PRD’s decision to leave the Pact for Mexico, but vowed to press on with reforms.

From the PRI’s point of view,

The ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, is hoping its energy reform will spur faster economic growth, and the departure of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) from the accord is likely to push the debate closer to a more business-friendly proposal backed by the center-right.

The Senate is expected to vote on the political overhaul as early as Tuesday, with a vote on the energy bill soon to follow.


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