The U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has targeted 18 individuals linked to drug kingpin Rafael Caro Quintero, who is currently serving a 40-year prison term for the kidnapping and murder of Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent Enrique Camarena in 1985.
Many of those named own or manage businesses in Guadalajara and its environs that have also been sanctioned under the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act (“Kingpin Act”).
“Quintero has used a network of family members and front persons to invest his fortune into ostensibly legitimate companies and real estate projects in the city of Guadalajara,” OFAC Director Adam Szubin said in a press release Thursday.
Americans dealing with any of these designated firms would be breaking U.S. law.
According to OFAC, the Kingpin Act “generally prohibits U.S. persons from conducting financial or commercial transactions with these designees, and also freezes any assets they may have under U.S. jurisdiction.”One of the companies named, Grupo Fracsa, operates two well-known, upscale real estate developments in Guadalajara: Zotogrande and Pontevedra. Both have been widely advertised on the Internet and in local Spanish-language magazines and newspapers in the past few years.
A spokesperson from the Treasury Department told the Reporter Thursday that U.S. citizens who had purchased (or were in the process of purchasing) property in either of these two developments should contact OFAC for guidance via its hotline at 1-800-540-6322 or 1-202-622-2490.
“The goal of these designations is to target the individuals associated with narcotics trafficking, not innocent U.S. persons,” said OFAC spokesperson John Sullivan.
Thursday’s OFAC action targeted five of Caro Quintero’s family members, including his four children, wife and daughter-in-law, as well as his personal secretary. Also targeted were members and associates of the Sanchez Garza family, which they said “is based in Guadalajara and involved in money laundering operations on behalf of Caro Quintero.”
According to the OFAC, these designated individuals own and/or manage the following Guadalajara based companies: Grupo Fracsa, S.A. de C.V. and Dbardi, S.A. de C.V. (real estate development companies); Grupo Constructor Segundo Milenio, S.A. de C.V. (a construction company); Restaurant Bar Los Andariegos (a.k.a. Barbaresco Restaurant in Colonia Providencia); and Piscilanea S.A. de C.V. (a.k.a. Albercas y Tinas Barcelona), a swimming pool company; Hacienda Las Limas (a hotel, spa in Tapalpa), Baño de Maria (beauty products), Pronto Shoes (catalog sales) and ECE Engergeticos (a gas station).
Any U.S. person involved in transactions with these designated companies would be violating the Kingpin Act, Sullivan confirmed. This would even include eating at the Barbaresco Restaurant in Colonia Providencia, which was still operating this week. Of course, the probability of any legal action being taken against unsuspecting customers is virtually nil. The same would apply to the purchase of gas at an OFAC designated gas station.
As far as this newspaper is aware, none of the owners of the above mentioned businesses are currently facing prosecution in this country.
President Bill Clinton signed the Kingpin Act into law in December 1999. Its main aim is to block all property and interests in property, subject to U.S. jurisdiction, owned or controlled by significant foreign narcotics traffickers as identified by the president.