[ad_1]
DOSSIER – In this January 19, 2017 archive photo provided by US law enforcement, authorities escort Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, in the center, from an aircraft to a SUV caravan Waiting at the Long Island MacArthur Airport, Ronkonkoma, Ronkonkoma Island, ON Monday, November 26, 2018, a government witness who testified at the US "drug lord" trial at Mexico, known as "El Chapo", said his cartel had paid large bribes to a law enforcement official. (US Law Enforcement via AP, File)
NEW YORK – A former Colombian drug addict known for an extreme transformation in plastic surgery supposed to hide his identity testified Thursday during a US lawsuit about his lucrative alliance in drug trafficking with his notorious Mexican counterpart Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman.
Asked about his distorted facial features, Juan Carlos Ramirez Abadia explained that he had undergone at least three surgeries that had impaired "my jaw bone, my cheekbones, my eyes, my mouth, my ears, my nose" .
Ramirez Abadia – nicknamed "Chupeta" or "Lollipop" – told the jury that he had bribed the Colombian authorities to destroy any criminal record designating him in order to stay ahead of the law while he was supervising the law. 39, with Norte del Valle.
During a career of 20 years, estimated the witness, he has fraudulently 400,000 kilos, ordered 150 murders and made a fortune so large that he lost a billion dollars after his arrest at the Brazil in 2007.
Ramirez Abadia was extradited to the United States, where he pleaded guilty to murder and drugs and agreed to become a government witness in the course of major narcotics prosecutions such as Guzman's. He was the third former drug dealer to have testified until now at the trial in federal court in Brooklyn, where Guzman had pleaded not guilty to conspiracy and other charges.
On Thursday, Ramirez Abadia described a meeting in a hotel in Mexico in the early 1990s, in which he had reached an agreement with Guzman that the Colombian cartel would ship cocaine to Mexico for the Sinaloa cartel in order to prevent him. smuggle to Los Angeles and New York. the witness said.
When Guzman asked for the purest possible product, Ramirez Abadia was happy to serve because he wanted to "have a reputation for having such a good cocaine," he said.
Guzman also demanded greater revenue cuts than other Mexican capital companies because his network was very efficient in getting him across the border.
"I'm going much faster, you'll see," he remembered, boasting.
After Ramirez Abadia moved to Brazil and found his face, he seemed so different that drug investigators were forced to use voice recognition technology in order to carry out the positive identification necessary for a search warrant, said his lawyer after his capture. It was found in a luxury home with a gym, sauna, swimming pool and nearly $ 1 million in cash.
[ad_2]
Source link