El Chapo Guzmán’s wife pleaded guilty to drug trafficking and money laundering in the United States

Emma Coronel, wife of “El Chapo” Guzmán, pleaded guilty to drug trafficking and money laundering in the USA. He did so this Thursday in Washington District Court.

The wife of the 31-year-old former Sinaloa cartel leader, who has dual Mexican and American nationality, responded briefly to Judge Rudolph Contreras, who accepted his statement, during a hearing broadcast by telephone in which he also claimed to have collaborated in the activities and her husband’s prison escape in Mexico in 2015.

The hearing lasted over an hour and there Colonel Aispuro pleaded guilty to three felonies: illicit association of trafficking in cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin and marijuana; money laundering and participation in real estate transactions belonging to a drug trafficker.

Dressed in a green convict report, Colonel Aispuro said the word “guilty” and patiently answered dozens of questions from a federal judge who said he wanted to make sure the accused understood the consequences of dismissing a trial.

El Chapo’s wife was arrested in February this year at Dulles International Airport near Washington, following a nearly two-year investigation by US law enforcement into her role of accomplice of her husband, whose real name is Joaquin Guzman Loera.

Prosecutors alleged that Coronel Aispuro “worked closely with the command and control structure” of the Sinaloa cartel and conspired to distribute large quantities of drugs, knowing they would be transported to the United States.

On Thursday, prosecutor Anthony Nardozzi said Colonel Aispuro “helped and instigated” the Sinaloa cartel’s goals of trafficking drugs to the United States, which assumed an “intermediary” role between Guzmán and the other members of the cartel by conveying her husband’s messages to others and that she helped “El Chapo” to escape from prison.

Guzmán, a former co-leader of the Sinaloa drug cartel, was convicted in 2019 in a federal trial in Brooklyn and is serving life imprisonment in Colorado’s so-called Supermax, America’s safest federal prison.

Coronel, his third – or possibly fourth – wife, had remained free even after a jury found him guilty, traveling between the United States and Mexico until his arrest. When she was detained by the FBI, there had been intense speculation as to whether Coronel, with dual U.S. and Mexican citizenship, would attempt to offer the government information about allies, relatives and business partners. of her husband in exchange for a lighter sentence.

But his deal with Washington prosecutors does not require you to cooperate with US authoritiessaid a person familiar with the case before Coronel came to court.

With information from agencies.

AFG