US to seize El Chapo's $12 billion fortune, denying his last wish to see it distributed among Mexico's indigenous people
The US government is likely to seize the massive $12 billion fortune accumulated by drug lord Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán, the former supremo of Mexico's Sinaloa Cartel, denying his reported wish to see it distributed among indigenous Mexicans, an expert has claimed.
Last month, Chapo reportedly penned a letter to Mexico's President Andrés Manuel López Obrador expressing a desire to have his ill-gotten gains given away to the 15 million people who made up the 56 indigenous groups in the country. "He expressed to his family over the phone his desire that the money that the United States intends to keep or that it has detected does not belong to the United States," his lawyer José Luis González Meza said at the time. "That the money should be returned to Mexico and his only plea to Mexican President López Obrador is for the money to be allocated to the indigenous communities."
Obrador, who had previously asserted that the US government has to return the assets they confiscated from Chapo back to Mexico, had expressed support for the drug lord's idea. "I liked the declaration. I don’t know if it’s true, I can’t verify it," he said. "If it’s as it came out in the media, that a lawyer says Guzman wants his wealth to be given to Mexico’s indigenous communities, I think it’s good."
However, Duncan Wood, director of the Wilson Centre's Mexico Institute, told the Daily Star that he believed the gesture was a futile one, and that the US was likely to keep whatever they found as reparation for the damage Chapo had done to their country through his drug trade.
"If El Chapo did reveal the whereabouts of his wealth, I don’t think it would be him who chose to who it was given," he explained. "I think there would be efforts on the part of the US government to seize those assets and to use them to rectify damages in the US."
He added that the Mexican government would try to keep some of his wealth for itself too, and cast doubt on whether Chapo would even go through with the plan of giving his wealth away."This is a man who is proud of his legacy, what he’s achieved in his life," Wood said. "I think he’s also dedicated to his wife and kids, so he wants to make sure that they're taken care of."
Chapo was convicted of a number of criminal charges related to his leadership of the Sinaloa Cartel and is currently being held in the US Penitentiary, Administrative Maximum Facility in Florence, Colorado, where he will spend the rest of his life in solitary confinement.