(Washington) One of the sons of Mexican drug trafficker Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, Ovidio Guzmán López, pleaded not guilty to multiple charges of drug trafficking, money laundering and weapons possession in US courts on Monday.
Published yesterday at 18:13.
Ovidio Guzmán López, 33, extradited on Friday by Mexico, which had detained him for more than eight months, pleaded not guilty to all the charges against him before a federal court in Chicago (north), the Department of Defense reported. of the United States. release.
According to US authorities, he is being prosecuted for having surrendered from May 2008 to October 2021 to a “criminal drug trafficking enterprise.” He is accused of participating in the importation into the United States of cocaine, heroin, methamphetamines and marijuana.
The defendant was detained without the possibility of bail, the Justice Department said.
After the arrest in 2016 and then the extradition to the United States in 2017 of “El Chapo”, until then considered the most powerful drug trafficker in the world, Ovidio Guzmán López and his three brothers took control of the Sinaloa cartel, to the detriment of the former associates of his father, according to the same source.
His capture by Mexican authorities in January, a few days before a visit by US President Joe Biden, led to the deaths of 10 soldiers and 19 alleged criminals during intense exchanges of gunfire in Culiacán, in the northwest of the country.
The extradition of Ovidio Guzmán López occurs a few days after the release of “El Chapo”’s wife, Emma Coronel Aispuro, 34, sentenced in November 2021 to three years in prison in the United States.
Sentenced to life in prison in July 2019 in New York, Joaquín Guzmán is serving his sentence in a high-security prison in Colorado.
