Treasury Department freezes assets of top Mexican fentanyl trafficker

Jan. 30 (UPI) -- U.S. Treasury Department officials Monday imposed sanctions on the leader of a global Mexico-based fentanyl trafficking organization and two of his associates.

The Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control ordered the freezing of U.S. assets and property of Jose Angel Rivera Zazueta, Nelton Santiso Aguila, and Jason Antonio Yang Lopez for procuring chemicals to manufacture and traffic illicit fentanyl and other synthetic drugs to the United States.

In a statement, the FAC office said the action was the result of ongoing efforts by the Drug Enforcement Agency and other U.S. agencies, in concert with the Mexican government, to disrupt the importation and distribution of illicit fentanyl, which is fueling the opioid crisis being experienced in the United States.

"Illicit fentanyl has led to unprecedented overdose deaths in the United States, with a majority of these drugs flowing from Mexican cartels, including the Sinaloa Cartel, using precursor chemicals from East Asia," said Under Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Brian E. Nelson.

"The United States will continue working with the government of Mexico to disrupt this deadly trade," he said.

The FAC office said Rivera Zazueta's drug manufacturing and trafficking organization, based in Culiacan, Sinaloa and Mexico City, operated on a global scale with nodes in the United States, South and Central America, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia.

Rivera Zazueta imported precursor chemicals from China into Mexico, authorities said, which were then used to manufacture synthetic drugs, including fentanyl, ecstasy, crystal methamphetamine, 2C-B and ketamine, the statement reads.

Rivera Zazueta also has worked closely with Shanghai Fast-Fine Chemicals, a Chinese chemical transportation company that the FAC office designated in 2021 for shipping various, often falsely labeled, precursor chemicals to drug trafficking organizations in Mexico for illicit fentanyl production intended for U.S. markets.

Additionally, Rivera Zazueta is responsible for moving large quantities of cocaine from Colombia to the United States, Spain, Italy, Guatemala, Mexico, and other countries in Europe and Central America, the FAC office said.

The DEA says it seized more than 50 million fentanyl pills and 10,800 lbs of fentanyl powder in 2022, enough of the drug to kill more than the entire population of the United States.

In 2021, the most-recent year for which figures are available, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported 106,000 overdose deaths. Two-thirds of those deaths were caused by synthetic opioids such as fentanyl, up 22% from 2020, while deaths from heroin overdose fell by almost a third.