Photo: Drew Angerer/AFP/Getty Images
By: EFE Posted Jun 23, 2023, 2:19 pm EDT
The United States announced Friday that it has filed charges against four Chinese-based chemical companies and eight Chinese citizens for trafficking precursor chemicals used to make fentanyl.
The United States Attorney General, merrick garlandreported at a press conference that in three separate indictments, Chinese chemical companies have been accused “for the first time” of providing the raw material to manufacture the drug to Mexican cartels such as the Sinaloa and Jalisco cartels.
“These companies and their employees knowingly conspired to manufacture lethal fentanyl for distribution in the United States,” Garland claimed.
One of these China-based chemical companies shipped more than 200 kilograms of precursor chemicals to the US in order to manufacture 50 kilograms of fentanyl, an amount that “could contain enough deadly doses of fentanyl to kill 25 million Americans”said the prosecutor.
This synthetic opioid is up to 50 times stronger than heroin and 100 times stronger than morphine.
The indictment against this company was filed in the Southern District of New York and its chief executive and two of its employees were also charged for “their role in the international fentanyl trafficking conspiracy.” Two of them are in custody.
“Defendants Openly Advertise Sale of Fentanyl Precursors Online and they tried to evade detection by law enforcement through the use of deceptive packaging,” Garland said of this operation in which undercover agents of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) participated.
Garland explained that in the last eight months the defendants sent the 200 kilos of chemical precursors without knowing that “the alleged traffickers they were dealing with were actually DEA confidential sources”.
In two other separate indictments filed in the Eastern District of New York, three other China-based companies were charged, as well as five of their employees, with conspiracy to manufacture and distribute fentanyl.
“Each of these companies also supplies precursor chemicals to the United States and Mexico, among other places, knowing that they will be used to produce fentanyl or other substances,” Garland insisted.
“These three companies openly advertise their products around the world and guarantee that the products they send to the US and Mexico will not be detected or intercepted. They also employ deceptive and fraudulent practices, such as mislabeling packages and making false declarations at border crossings,” he explained.
In 2022, the prosecutor detailed, the DEA and other authorities seized more than 50.6 million fake prescription pills laced with fentanyl, more than double the amount seized in 2021. And also 10,000 pounds of fentanyl powder (453 kilos).
“Together, these seizures represent more than 379 million potentially fatal doses of fentanyl. That much fentanyl could kill all AmericansGarland warned.
As detailed by DEA administrator Anne Milgram, almost all fentanyl precursors are manufactured and shipped from China today.
Keep reading:
– California authorities seize enough fentanyl in San Francisco to kill its population three times over.
– Fentanyl attacks the military in the United States: The Pentagon reveals that there are more than 170 soldiers killed by its consumption.