“Char” for Borderland Beat
This article was translated and reposted from EL SOL DE SINALOA
According to the U.S. Treasury Department, Establo Puerto Rico is one of the front entities for laundering organized crime proceeds.
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| EL PADRINO |
Editor / El Sol de Sinaloa
This is one of the first companies founded by Ismael Zambada García, alias “El Mayo”, and according to the Treasury Department, it is one of the front entities for laundering organized crime assets.
In 2007, it was one of the businesses that appeared on the list of the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, and from that time on, the then Attorney General’s Office began to intervene in it until it was reduced to a shell, which today is out of operations.
Establo Puerto Rico Sa de Cv was founded as a company at the end of the 80s, together with others in the cattle industry, and was physically established in the ranch of the same name on the road to El Salado; its executive offices were located on Manuel Vallarta Avenue, in the Centro Sinaloa neighborhood, a few blocks from the Government Palace in Culiacán.
According to testimonies, the Puerto Rico ranch was Ismael Zambada’s pride and joy, the first one he built when he achieved fame and money as a drug trafficker.
He named it after the island nation in memory of his late brother-in-law, a Puerto Rican drug trafficker who had been the partner of one of his sisters and who had helped him get into the cocaine business in the late 1970s.
The La Lechera years
Establo Puerto Rico was one of the companies that fed, together with Nueva Industria de Ganaderos, the dairy product to the commercial company Leche Santa Monica; in the articles of incorporation did not appear El Mayo, but his wives did Rosario Niebla Cardoza and his daughters as well Modesta, Midiam Patricia, María Teresa, and Mónica del Rosario.
In Sinaloa, they grew as prosperous workplaces for hundreds of workers, until at the end of the 1990s the PGR began to block their accounts to asphyxiate them economically.
For years, the Santa Monica was a product that reached the taste of Sinaloa families and part of the northwest of the country, until in 2007 OFAC. Along with the companies mentioned above, the Treasury signed Jamaro Constructores, Multiservicios Jeviz S.A. de C.V.: Arte y Diseño de Culiacán S.A. de C.V.; and Autotransportes JYM S.A. de C.V.
Doña Rosario and her daughters appeared on the list as alleged financial operators. A year later, the Estancia Infantil “El Niño Feliz”, controversial for receiving at least 22 million pesos from the Mexican Social Security Institute during the first years of López Obrador’s government, was also listed.
According to warrant 261/2022, resolved by the Fourth District Judge of Culiacán, the Financial Intelligence Unit of the Ministry of Finance asked the bank BBVA Bancomer to block the accounts.
The challenged act states: “The blocking or immobilization of the bank account number (tested) of said financial institution”.
The report states that when the legal representative of Establo Puerto Rico went to the bank to cash a check, the teller told him that the account was blocked, without giving him a reason or legal argument.
Thus, although the bank branch did not establish the origin of the blockage, it was established that the third party authority concerned was the UIF, which did not challenge once the district judge indicated that BBVA cannot deny access to Establo Puerto Rico’s financial resources without legal grounds. Therefore, it proceeded to request the lifting of the freezing of the Mayo Company’s account.
The other cases
At the beginning of March, El Sol de Sinaloa published that a sister of Mayo Zambada, Ana María, and one of her alleged associates (according to OFAC), are fighting for the resources in their bank accounts under the argument that they are their pensions, she as a retired teacher and José Antonio Peregrina Taboada with his contributions to the IMSS.
Ana María has already won a first warrant, but the UIF maintains the legal fight to prevent her account from being released. In addition to these two people related to the kingpin of El Alamo, El Salado, one of Zambada’s ex-partners, Leticia Ortiz, mother of Serafin Zambada Ortiz, one of Mayo’s youngest sons, is also in litigation against the UIF.
The FIU’s Actions
In a confidential report obtained in Guacamaya, the FIU held a meeting with officials from security and intelligence agencies of the United States and the Mexican government, where they explained that until 2020 the Sinaloa Cartel had blocked the resources of 2,131 bank accounts of a total of 401 people directly involved in money laundering.
However, El Sol de Sinaloa has been able to document how judges and courts grant warrants to companies and individuals linked to organized crime bosses, or failing that, the lawsuits remain active in the courts.