7 News Belize

Sinaloa Secrets About Belize
posted (January 4, 2019)
There was a major tremor in the drug underworld yesterday when when Vicente Zambada testified in a New York Courtroom against Joaquín El Chapo Guzmán, the former boss of the Sinaloa cartel.

Niebla is the son of the current boss of that cartel and was the heir to take over the cartel. But, instead - in what the New York Times calls "an astonishing betrayal", quote, "the cartel prince betrayed his father - and his birthright - testifying for more than five hours about nearly every aspect of the drug-trafficking empire: smuggling routes, money-laundering schemes, bloody wars, personal vendettas and multimillion dollars in bribes. When it came to the enterprise he seemed poised to lead one day, Mr. Zambada proved he knew almost everyone and everything."

And that "everything" includes Belize, apparently. The Times article reports, quote "Mr. Zambada jumped from topic to topic, proving himself familiar with both Mr. Guzmán's business ventures and his personal entourage. He told the jurors stories not only about the drug lord's operations in Mexico, Honduras and Belize, but also about his suppliers, distributors, bodyguards, assassins, cousins, brothers and sons."

So what did he say about Belize? Well, the newspaper reports don't include that - it is, after all, only a footnote in a much larger kingpin prosecution. But although we don't yet know what he said specifically about Belize's connection to the Sinaloa Cartel, according to a report from 2017 on Ciper, a Chilean online news platform, the confessions of Vicente Zambada between 2011 and 2012, revealed that an underboss, named Dámaso López Núñez had infrastructure in place in Honduras, Guatemala and Belize to transport cocaine from Colombia to Mexico. He said that Dámaso would use crop dusters to transport up to 500 kilos of cocaine at a time.

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