Mexico-US: And the Intelligence?

Yesterday the United States added two sons of the narcotrafficker Joaqín “El Chapo” Guzmán to the “black list” of the country’s Department of Treasury. The action intends to prohibit any person or company in the U.S. from conducting business with the identified subjects, in addition to freezing the assets of the accused. The country’s Office of Foreign Assets Control designated Iván Archivaldo Guzmán Salazar and Ovidio Guzmán López as active members “in the drug trafficking network of their father and the Sinaloa cartel.”

It is an accusation that may look obvious, but not in legal terms. This means that the U.S. can rely on sufficient information, from its point of view, to try the Guzmáns in court in a way Mexico couldn’t four years ago.

It is necessary to remember that Archivaldo Guzmán has already been arrested in Mexico for the crime of operating using illegally acquired funds; nevertheless, a federal court acquitted him on the grounds that there was no evidence besides his kinship.

Once again, proceedings have begun in the U.S. against people or companies who in Mexico remain unharmed. Why could they not be tried here? Beyond the obvious differences between the investigation capacities of the two countries — but also the quality of the judicial system — it remains clear that major coordination between the two countries is missing.

If they had conducted this investigation together, for example, perhaps today the suspects mentioned above would have already been tried using all the elements that both U.S. and Mexico could have contributed. Possibly the gap lies in the traditional American distrust of Mexican authorities. They have not learned the lesson of what happens when they do things on their own as was the case of the failed arms trafficking operation, “Fast and Furious.” For some reason, Bill Clinton reiterated yesterday that the United States no longer has any other choice but to become allies with Mexico in matters of security.

Working together by means of joint intelligence would have a greater impact on the most aggressive form of organized crime, especially because this is the way to attack money laundering, the “circulatory system” of organized crime. To act without intelligence is to take shots in the dark.