“Sol Prendido” for Borderland Beat
The Banking Affairs Committee of the United States Senate approved, on June 21, 2023, an initiative that would allow the U.S. Government to expropriate bank accounts, goods and other frozen assets from Mexican cartels and their accomplices, as part of the strategy to combat trafficking in fentanyl and chemical precursors.
The initiative, which received the support of the Republican and Democratic members of the Senate Committee, also proposes sanctions against bank executives who do not supervise unusual movements that could be derived from illicit activities.
“That’s why our bill uses our economic arsenal to target the foreign supply chain of fentanyl, from Chinese chemical suppliers to Mexican cartel distributors and money launderers who benefit from illicit drug trafficking,” said Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown, who chairs the Committee.
The bill, which is known as the “FEND Off Fentanyl Act,” will be discussed in the Plenary of the U.S. Upper House, where it is expected to be approved, since the initiative has two-party support from at least 60 out of the 100 senators.
“We have almost all the members of our committee and more than half of all the senators as co-sponsors. Just today we reached 60 co-sponsors,” Brown said. “It’s time for us to sanction the manufacturers, exporters and the cartels that traffic and sell this poison by hitting them where it hurts the most, their bank accounts,” said Republican Tim Scott.
“This historic legislation would use sanctions to sting the profits of Chinese suppliers and Mexican cartels that send deadly fentanyl across our border,” Scott wrote on his Twitter account.
The senatorial initiative has more scope than Executive Order 14059, which was published by President Joe Biden in 2021, in which the threat derived from the trafficking of fentanyl was declared as a national emergency for the United States and which included, in addition to the Mexican cartels, the trafficking of fentanyl and/or chemical precursors.
The FEND Off Fentanyl Act allows the head of the U.S. Federal Executive Power – in addition to freezing assets that Mexican cartels and other actors may have under the jurisdiction of the United States – to expropriate them in favor of the prosecution of justice.
“The president may transfer the proceeds of any confiscated property covered [by said Act] to the Treasury Department’s Seizing Fund or the Department of Justice’s Estate Seizing Fund,” says the bill promoted by Senators Brown and Scott.
Likewise, the initiative would also force the head of the U.S. Federal Executive Branch to send a report to the U.S. Congress, to report on the mode of money laundering in Mexico, China and Myanmar, which use flows and transactions of legitimate commercial goods, to disguise their illicit origin.
On the other hand, on June 21, 2023, a group of Republican senators urged the Administration headed by President Joseph Biden, to “use all diplomatic tools, to persuade the Mexican government to counter the threat to national security posed by the Mexican drug cartels.”
This, according to Republican senators, in the face of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s alleged lack of action, in the fight against drug trafficking, as well as his policy of undermining anti-drug cooperation with the United States.
Bill Hagerty, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the Senate Banking Committee, along with five other Republican legislators – Jim Risch, Marco Rubio, Marsha Blackburn, Ted Cruz and John Barrasso – sent a letter to Janet Yellen and Antony Blinken, heads of the U.S. Treasury and State departments.
In the letter, Republican senators mentioned that “since taking office, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has tried to dismantle tough security anti-narcotics cooperation with the United States, acted in bad faith routinely and allowed drug cartels to dramatically expand their operations throughout Mexico, with impunity.
“In addition, the Biden Administration’s commitment and attempts to accommodate did not persuade President López Obrador to take action against the Mexican drug cartels. Cooperation between the United States and Mexico on anti-narcotics has reached its lowest point in decades in many lines of effort,” Republican legislators insisted.
In the two-part letter, the senators urged the Biden Administration, “to use the expanded sanctions authority as a lever and adopt a more assertive approach. This includes the imposition of sanctions and visa bans aimed at Mexican officials at the state and local government levels who support […] directly to the cartels, until López Obrador’s administration resumes support for joint operations, increases the exchange of intelligence and increases the pressure against the cartels and their facilitators in the Government.
Republican legislators detailed that “the imposition of sanctions on corrupt state and local officials in Mexico, which allow cartel operations, would have the effect of freezing future investments in the target states and would impose real costs on Mexico, for refusing to confront the cartels and degrade anti-narcotics cooperation with the United States.”
The senators also said that “President López Obrador’s unwillingness to act against the cartels and the breaking of key lines of effort for anti-narcotics cooperation represent a significant and growing threat to the security of the American people”
“In addition to controlling up to 40 percent of Mexican territory, cartels also control the main traffic corridors to the United States and facilitate the passage of a record number of illegal foreigners to our country and almost all illicit drugs that cross our border,” Republican legislators said.
The senators concluded in their letter that “it is time to use all the diplomatic tools available to the Executive Branch to persuade the government of President López Obrador to resume sincere and effective cooperation against drug trafficking and work to eradicate these groups.”