© Reuters. FILE PHOTO: U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Mexico’s Finance Minister Rogelio Ramirez de la O maintain a bilateral assembly through the APEC (Asia-Pacific Financial Cooperation) Summit in San Francisco, California, U.S. November 12, 2023. REUTERS/Carlos
By David Lawder
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Wednesday introduced new sanctions towards 15 people and two Mexican corporations linked to a drug cartel as she seeks to enhance cooperation with Mexico in stemming the move of the lethal opioid fentanyl to the U.S.
Yellen unveiled the sanctions on her first journey to Mexico since taking workplace in 2021. They’re geared toward disrupting the Beltran Leyva Group, which the Treasury describes as “one of the most powerful drug trafficking organizations in the world,” and a significant provider of cocaine and now fentanyl, to the U.S.
Throughout her go to to Mexico, Yellen is aiming to sharpen each international locations’ capacity to seek out and minimize off the move of financing to drug cartels and their entrance corporations.
“We have authorities now that I think make it easier for us to go after middlemen who are not actually trading fentanyl itself but goods like pill presses and pharmaceuticals that aren’t export controlled,” Yellen instructed reporters.
“But when used as part of a cartel to facilitate the drug trade, we can now come down and put sanctions on those entities,” she added.
Yellen toured a Mexican authorities crime lab that’s pioneering the coaching of canine to detect fentanyl precursor chemical substances. She is going to meet with non-public sector finance executives and Mexico’s finance minister and central financial institution chief to enhance data sharing. On Thursday, she is scheduled to fulfill with Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.
In remarks on Treasury’s efforts, she stated that opioid overdoses, together with fentanyl, are killing greater than 1,500 individuals in America per week, making fentanyl the largest killer of individuals aged 18-49 in the USA.
The journey follows Treasury’s announcement on Monday of a counter-fentanyl “strike force” that can convey collectively the division’s sources, together with the Workplace of Terrorism and Monetary Intelligence and the Inner Income Service’s Felony Investigation unit, to disrupt illicit drug trafficking, together with by means of cryptocurrencies.
U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese language President Xi Jinping final month agreed to deepen cooperation to stem the move of fentanyl precursor chemical substances from China, which are sometimes combined by Mexican drug gangs earlier than distribution within the U.S.
Yellen stated the drive for Mexico’s cooperation in imposing sanctions is a crucial a part of making good on the Biden-Xi anti-fentanyl pledge.
“We’re meeting with a number of the entities in Mexico that are providing us with information. And we’ll have a meeting with many of the banks tomorrow to discuss information sharing. They’ve been increasingly helpful in providing information that’s useful in tracing these (financial) flows.”
The Treasury has been imposing sanctions — which goal to chop illicit actors off the U.S. greenback based mostly monetary system — for years, disrupting particular person cartels, however the actions have did not sluggish the general move of illicit medication to the USA.
Jeffrey Schott (ETR:), a senior fellow with the Peterson Institute for Worldwide Economics in Washington, stated the U.S.-Mexico medication commerce and its related safety considerations has additionally changing into an obstacle to enterprise funding in Mexico.
Inhibiting manufacturing and distribution of fentanyl, cocaine, heroin and different medication is vital, “but part of it needs to be to dampen the U.S. demand for the drugs. And we don’t seem to be doing a good job of that.”
