New York, July 6: United States President Donald Trump-led government has on Friday said they demanded a court order needing Mexican drug mafia Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman to pay a penalty of $12.7 billion following his detention, earlier this year, over the charges of drug trafficking and racketeering crimes.
According to Reuters news reports, the penalty covers a total amount of heroin, marijuana, and cocaine that a court jury has found El Chapo to have trafficked, further multiplied by an average cost of all those drugs, as per a court filing in Brooklyn federal court by prosecutors.
However, it was unclear what kind of assets (if any), the US government could attempt to seize in order to satisfy the judgment. A spokesperson for the prosecutors rejected to a request for comment.
A lawyer for Guzman, Jeffrey Lichtman, said, “This is largely an academic exercise as the government has never located or identified a penny of this $12.7 billion in proceeds supposedly generated by Mr. Guzman.”
62-year-old Guzman was convicted on February 12 over all the charged he faced, after a court heard shreds of evidence from over 50 prosecution witnesses, providing an unparallel look over the working of El Chapo’s Sinaloa Cartel. He is slated to face life imprisonment at his scheduled July 17 court sentencing.
US district judge Brian Cogan on Wednesday dismissed his motion to ignore the verdict and hold new court trial. Guzman’s lawyer argued a fresh trial was indeed after an interview with a juror was published by Vice News, who has stated the jury disobeyed orders during the case.
Guzman made himself popular in the 1980s through constructing cross-border tunnels that permitted him to flow cocaine market underground into the US from Mexico more faster than anyone else could have done.
He has spent most of his life and career on this run, moving from one hideout place in the ranges of Sinaloa to another hideout space, guarded by his private army.
He has twice escaped the high-security prison in Mexico. He was then detained in January 2016 and further extradited to America for further cour prosecution.
Despite his arrest, the Sinaloa Cartel remains the largest US distribution presence of the Mexican cartels, which was followed a fast-growing Jalisco New Generation Cartel, as the reports of the US drug enforcement administration.