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The strategy of mobilizing consuls and other officials to lead the debate with their US counterparts regarding security in Mexico and fentanyl trafficking may have some utility, but it is a move more for internal consumption. is one that will influence that debate within the American Union. Any controversy is undermined if over a hundred thousand people continue to die each year from fentanyl overdoses in that country at the same time. That’s kind of a red line that once crossed is very hard to pull back. And that has already happened.
The debate could and should be led through other areas, through collaboration (which exists in many spaces, but should be much more clear and visible) and insufficiency. For example, from December 2021, the United States government identified one of the main suppliers of illegal fentanyl to Mexico and the American Union itself. On December 16 of that year, the United States Treasury Department announced new measures directly related to the prosecution of trafficking in fentanyl and its precursors. It was the first time that he did not focus clearly on the cartels, but on the global plan that manages this huge business, which originates in China and is in Mexico in one of the most important spaces for organized crime.
In addition to offering a five million dollar reward, through the DEA, for information leading to his arrest, the Treasury Department added to its lists of drug traffickers. Yip Fat Chuen and his company, Wuhan Yuancheng Gongchuang Technology Co Ltd.
Here we told you then that Yip Fat Chuen heads a criminal organization, according to the Treasury Department, that operates in China and Hong Kong. It markets fentanyl, anabolic steroids and other synthetic drugs and controls a group of companies that sell fentanyl compounds and chemical precursors to public and private companies, one of which is Wuhan Yuancheng Gongchuang Technology Co. Ltd. He is directly linked to the Sinaloa Cartel. And they are the ones who provide the drugs to that organization for illegal sale in the United States.
Companies of Yip Fat Chuen they receive internet orders for precursors and compounds, which they then ship around the world. Yip Fat Chuen It is also considered, says the United States government, as the most important producer of anabolic steroids in the world. It uses virtual currency, such as bitcoin, and funds transfers through money services companies and banks to receive your payments.
In case Yip Fat Chuen He is also associated with another Chinese chemical transport company: Shanghai Fast-Fine Chemicals Co., which since 2019 has been sending chemical precursors, often falsely labeled, to criminal groups in Mexico, especially the Sinaloa Cartel, for trafficking drugs and fentanyl production. The other approved companies are Hebei Huanhao Biotechnology Co., and Hebei Atun Trading Co. The first company, also located in China, imports and exports chemical and pharmaceutical products used to produce opioids. He was also involved in the production of fentanyl precursors. The latter is involved in selling fentanyl precursor chemicals and falsifying chemical shipment data.
These are the main suppliers, says the US government, of illegal fentanyl and other precursors to the Sinaloa Cartel, the most important producer of this illegal drug in Mexico and its import and distribution in the United States. That December, the Treasury Department, for the first time, placed the Reds Cartel and Guerreros Unidos on its lists, initially split from a group it had held for many years, the Beltran Leiva. The Reds, says the Treasury, are responsible for the trafficking of numerous illegal drugs, heroin in particular, into the United States. Guerreros Unidos, according to him, has increased its role in the heroin trade and collaborates with the Jalisco Nueva Generación Cartel, with which it shares the same transport networks to transport drugs to the United States and to launder money in Mexico.
But the axis is fentanyl. As we hoped in the book The new war, from Chapo to fentanyl (Grijalbo, 2021), in the post-pandemic world, the trafficking of synthetic drugs such as fentanyl would have a leading place. This synthetic opioid is much cheaper to produce; for its consumption, doses of less than two milligrams are needed, so that thousands can be made with a few kilos; it can be produced in any kitchen, it does not smell, its appearance is innocent, and it is sold in small pills, impossible to distinguish from any medicine; the utilities it leaves are geometrically superior to those of any other drug. It has a major disadvantage, it kills very easily.
Many of our criminals are free and that is our responsibility. But from December 2021, Yip Fat Chuen and his companies have been identified by the US authorities and since then we have had no news about him, his companies continue to traffic and the drug continues to reach Mexican cartels and consumers in that country. Hit there, and in other cases like Yip Fat Chuen is what is needed. That is the key collaboration we need in the fight against fentanyl. To Mexico, that possibility surpasses it. But nobody talks about it.