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Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán paid a $ 100 million bribe to former Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto, a Colombian drug dealer said today when he testified at the trial in Guzman in Brooklyn.
Money was sent by a woman named Comadre María in Mexico City, she said.
Alex Cifuentes spoke about the alleged corruption of the former Mexican president during his testimony at the Guzman drug trial in New York City. He started to mention the alleged bribes for the first time when he started cooperating with the US authorities in 2016.
A spokesman for Nieto, who left office at the end of 2018, said in the past that this is false.
Asked by the Guzmán lawyer, Cifuentes said he was not sure about the delivery of the bribe.
Cifuentes, once the right hand of "El Chapo" for several years, said shortly before the trial that Guzmán tried to offer 10 million dollars to the "general of the nation" in Mexico, who would reject the offer because "hated Joaquín a lot". . The attempted corruption occurred in January 2013 and the general's name was not given.
Cifuentes said that Guzmán saw the opportunity to bribe the general when an employee of the cartel, Andrea Vélez Fernández, told him that he had access to the military, described only by Cifuentes as "generals of the nation". Velez owned a modeling agency in Mexico City, Cifuentes said, and introduced women to the general at private parties on Wednesdays.
The witness explained that Guzmán took the opportunity to ask Vélez to offer the general 10 million "to leave him alone". If the general accepted the offer, Guzmán promised to pay Vélez a million dollars. The employee of the cartel, however, was not successful. Cifuentes said that the general hated Guzmán.
"El Chapo" got angry, Cifuentes said, called her a liar and ordered her to be killed.
Vélez was described at the trial as a friend and secretary of Cifuentes, who helped to traffic drugs in the Sinaloa cartel. However, the cartel collaborator began to secretly collaborate with the US authorities in 2012 and was transferred to the United States "because of a threat," an FBI agent testified during the trial. The agent, Stephen Marston, also claimed that the US government paid Velez nearly $ 300,000 for expenses and services.
"El Chapo", one of the best-known drug traffickers and former leader of the Sinaloa cartel, pleaded not guilty of accumulating a multimillion-dollar fortune through the traffic of tons of cocaine and other drugs from Mexico to the United States. If he were found guilty, he would face a possible life sentence. Guzmán addresses 11 charges, including drug trafficking, arms trafficking, money laundering and participation in a criminal enterprise.
On Tuesday, a couple of abductions by Guzmán were also briefly discussed during the trial.
One was the captain of the Ecuadorian army Telmo Castro, whom Guzman had kidnapped in Ecuador in 2013 for alleged theft of money. Cifuentes explained that Guzmán told him, after the kidnapping, that he had managed to maintain a hotel that Castro had in Central America. Later that year Castro was arrested by the Ecuadorian authorities accused of drug trafficking. Before the abduction, the captain had helped the Sinaloa cartel to transport drugs through Ecuador, in army trucks, in exchange for money.
Another person abducted by Guzmán was a certain Tatiana, a member of Cifuentes's sister-in-law, and to whom some 300,000 dollars were sent to buy drugs in Panama. The purchase was not successful, but the money was not returned to Guzmán, so he abducted her when she went to Mexico. Once the payment was made, Tatiana was released, said Cifuentes, who did not give the woman's surname.
Cifuentes, a 50-year-old Colombian, lived with Guzmán in the Sinaloa mountain range from 2007 to 2009 and then in the "El Chapo" houses in the mountains until his arrest in 2013.
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