(Washington) One of the sons of Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, Ovidio Guzman Lopez, pleaded not guilty to multiple charges of drug trafficking, money laundering and weapons possession before the American courts on Monday.
Ovidio Guzman Lopez, 33, extradited 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), said the US Department of Defense. Justice in a press release.
According to the American authorities, he is being prosecuted for having delivered himself 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 held in custody without the possibility of bail, the Justice Department said.
Following 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 Guzman Lopez and his three brothers took control of the Sinaloa cartel, to the detriment of their father’s former associates, according to the same source.
Its capture by Mexican authorities in January, a few days before a visit by US President Joe Biden, resulted in the deaths of 10 soldiers and 19 suspected criminals during intense exchanges of fire in Culiacan, in the north. west of the country.
The extradition of Ovidio Guzman Lopez comes a few days after the release of the wife of “El Chapo”, Emma Coronel Aispuro, 34, sentenced in November 2021 to three years in prison in the United States.
Sentenced to life imprisonment in July 2019 in New York, Joaquin Guzman is serving his sentence in a high-security prison in Colorado.