The son of El Chapo's secret trip through Medellín

Translated by El Profe for Borderland Beat from El Tiempo Thank you BB follower for the heads up

Jesús Alfredo Guzmán Salazar, son of drug trafficker Joaquín 'El Chapo' Guzmán. 

                         

By: Rafael Croda*

*This work was published by the Mexican magazine Proceso that circulates this week. El Tiempo reproduces with permission of the weekly.

Jesús Alfredo Guzmán Salazar, son of drug trafficker Joaquín 'El Chapo' Guzmán and who was last month included on the list of the 10 most wanted by the United States Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), spent several months living in Medellín, the second most important city in Colombia and which has become a "safe" site for senior Sinaloa Cartel officials with problems in Mexico.


This is what an informant from Colombian security agencies says, who also works with  DEA and FBI agents based in this country.

The source consulted, who spoke with this weekly on condition of anonymity, states that Guzmán Salazar, known as the 'Alfredillo', arrived in Medellín two years ago, after he was kidnapped and released in August 2016 by a rival group of the Sinaloa Cartel at the La Leche restaurant in Puerto Vallarta." He arrived in Envigado (a municipality in the metropolitan area of Medellín) protected by 'La Oficina' (the dominant criminal group in this city) and here he gave himself a great life and did not stop doing drug business," the source says. 

A high boss of 'La Oficina' confirmed this information to Proceso and showed a cell phone picture of  Guzmán Salazar with a woman similar in appearance to the actress Kate del Castillo.

"It's him. He is the son of 'El Chapo'," he said pointing to the young man in the photo, and assured that Jesús Alfredo Guzmán Salazar was in Medellín with the knowledge and endorsement of a faction of 'La Oficina' known as La Terraza, which has a strong presence in Envigado and who was in charge of his security

The Colombian National Police (PNC) and DEA agents and the FBI in Colombia also had knowledge of the presence of the son of 'Chapo' in Medellín, but they never managed to locate him.

"They acted late and were always one step behind him," the source said; as well as an intelligence officer from the National Police authorized to discuss the case with the reservation that his name not to be published says that agents of the institution were investigating the matter, but never achieved to establish if Guzmán Salazar was in Medellín.

"We do not rule out that he was there and that he left before we got there, but, from the information we gathered, we do not believe that he was something like a plaza boss of the Sinaloa Cartel in Medellín or in Colombia. We followed several indications, we did the necessary investigative processes, but we could not verify something like that," he says.

The authorities know that the son of 'El Chapo' was in Medellín with another identity and that he moved with great discretion, caution and guarded at a prudent distance by his escorts between Envigado and the exclusive sectors of El Poblado and Las Palmas, where he had luxury apartments in which he held private parties attended by young and attractive women and friends he made in Medellín.

He also traveled frequently with his retinue to estates near the city. "He likes to consume whiskey, marijuana and perico (cocaine) with his friends and her friends. And music, he likes the northern Mexican and reggaeton," says the informant of the police and US agencies.

He says that where more time was spent was in the penthouse of an apartment building where high-income people live in a neighborhood of Envigado.

The building was always guarded by escorts who made rondines in modest cars and without making ostentation of their weapons so as not to attract attention. He never left without at least 15 of them, but only he used an armored vehicle. It was a gray Toyota Prado.

His escorts were people from a powerful sector of 'La Oficina' that is present in that area of the metropolitan area of Medellín. There, in Envigado, it was precisely where drug lord Pablo Escobar founded ' La Oficina ' three decades ago as the armed wing of the Medellin Cartel.



In Envigado it continues to send the most traditional wing of that criminal organization and one of the most connected with political and business sectors. Some of the escorts of the 'Alfredillo' made friends with him and he incorporated them into the business to be undertaken in Medellín, the city that Pablo Escobar became the global epicenter of drug trafficking in the 80s.

From Vallarta to Medellín

From Jesús Alfredo Guzmán Salazar, the 'Alfredillo', it is known that last May he turned 35 and that he is the second son of the 'Chapo'. The first is his brother Iván Archivaldo, 'El Chapito'.



The mother of both is Alejandrina Salazar Hernández, the first wife of the Sinaloa Cartel's top boss and who today is a prisoner in the United States and tried on several drug charges in federal court in Brooklyn.

On August 15, 2016, the 'Alfredillo' and his brother Iván Archivaldo were kidnapped at the La Leche restaurant in Puerto Vallarta by a Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) commando, as part of the territorial dispute waged by that criminal group and the Sinaloa Cartel in various regions of Mexico.

Five days later, and thanks to the efforts of Ismael 'El Mayo' Zambada, the children of 'El Chapo' - who along with their half brother Ovidio Guzmán López head one of the factions of the Sinaloa Cartel - were released in exchange for payment. of a rescue.

The arrival of 'Alfredillo' in Medellín occurred at the end of September 2016, a few weeks after its release in Mexico. "

The first thing he does when they release him is to start (flee) for Colombia," says the informant from the Colombian and US security agencies consulted by this weekly.

The source explains that he had access to that information many months after the 'Alfredillo' arrived in Medellín, when the heir of 'El Chapo' had decided to start a cocaine manufacturing business in a semi-rural area of Envigado.

"First he set up a coca processing lab where he had 20 people working. I already had contact with one of them and it was the one that began to pass me information about the Mexican. Very few knew that he was the son of 'Chapo', many told him 'El Charro,'" he says.


He says that through an intelligence work of several months for which he expected to receive a reward, he learned that 'El Charro' was actually the son of 'El Chapo' who had been kidnapped and released by a rival group of the Cartel from Sinaloa in Mexico in 2016.

"Risking my life, I met with people who were very close to him and who told me his story and what he was doing in Medellin. He was managing a lot of money that he invested with a group of entrepreneurs. There were well-known companies that are under investigation,"he says.

He says that the faction of 'The Office' that protected him and that he contacted local businessmen received a share of all his business in the city, both money laundering and production and export of cocaine.” 

He came to have two cocaine laboratories (in which coca base paste was converted into cocaine hydrochloride) in which he produced about 100 kilos of cocaine per week. Each month I took a truck loaded with 400 kilos that sent by land to Buenaventura (the main port of the Colombian Pacific), from where they went by sea to Mexico,"he says.

The informant has photographs of the truck that the son of 'El Chapo' used to transport the drug to Buenaventura , as well as the vehicles used by some of his bodyguards.

Proceso knew them, as well as intelligence agents of the National Police, but their publication would put the informant at risk and an investigation that is underway.

At the end of last year, when Colombian security agencies, the DEA and the FBI believed they had signs to presume that El Chapo's son was in Medellín and was carrying out illegal activities, he disappeared, which ruined the investigation. that was developed and in which the US agencies participated.

According to the source consulted, Guzmán Salazar reappeared in Medellín in mid-February and settled again in Envigado.

Ensures that even Guzman Salazar sponsored a football team in a neighborhood near the semi-rural neighborhood where their laboratories were to process cocaine hydrochloride.

When he returned, "some Saturdays he would watch his team matches accompanied by his friends and very nice women". Four months ago, he lost track again. Intelligence agents of the National Police investigate if Guzmán Salazar was alerted by any authority through the group of 'The Office' that protected him or directly.

The agents believe that the son of 'Chapo' returned to Mexico or is hiding in a city in the Colombian Coffee Axis under the protection of the Sinaloa Cartel's allies in Colombia.

In any case, the DEA included it last month, for the first time, in its list of the 10 most wanted criminals.

There he appears with the heads of the Sinaloa Cartel, Ismael 'El Mayo' Zambada and Rafael Caro Quintero, and the leader of the New Generation Jalisco Cartel, Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, 'El Mencho', who ordered him to kidnap in August. 2016.