"El Tio" to be extradited shortly

Chivis Martinez Borderland Beat Reforma

Raúl Flores Hernández "El Tío, the alleged drug trafficker who associated with the soccer player Rafael Márquez and the singer Julión Álvarez, will be extradited shortly to the United States.

The First Criminal Collegiate Court in Mexico City yesterday denied the amparo in review that it presented against its extradition to the U.S. exhausting all the legal remedies available to avoid it.

The alleged intermediary of the Cartels of Sinaloa and Jalisco Nueva Generación does not have pending proceedings for crimes committed in Mexico and neither claimed in its protection aspects that could be reviewed by the Supreme Court of Justice.

It is for these reasons that the Federal Government no longer has any obstacle to extradite him and it is only a matter of time for him to be scheduled for his delivery to US authorities, sources of the Judicial Branch of the Federation indicated.

As they indicated, Flores is a 66-year-old man who was supposedly engaged in smuggling  and who at least since 1983 began to get involved in the transport of cocaine from Columbia, Peru and Ecuador, via Guadalajara.

"Tio" will be made available to the Federal Court of the District of Columbia, in Washington, to be tried by criminal association for distributing five kilos or more of cocaine, knowing that they were to be illegally imported into US territory.

The ruling issued yesterday in the plenary session of the collegiate was by two votes against one, since the rapporteur Judge Francisco Javier Sarabia Ascencio and his colleague Juan José Olvera López voted to confirm the refusal of amparo first instance. The dissident was Judge Horacio Hernández Orozco.

This ruling confirmed the sentence issued on May 21 by the amparo judge Erik Zabalgoitia, who concluded that the extradition of "El Tío" complied with the law and the international treaty on the matter.

Soccer player Rafael Márquez and the singer Julión Álvarez are accused by the United States as being in collusion with Flores and assist in trafficking and money laundering. 

Although he worked independently, he maintained alliances with both Sinaloa and Jalisco cartels.

He was arrested in 2017