DEA photo
By
Ricardo Swire
The Kingpin List is a key United States Treasury Department tool, used to help infiltrate and dismantle invisible multi-million dollar foreign criminal syndicates.
The December 3, 1999 Kingpin Act’s Treasury Department deterrent is officially known as the “Specially Designated Nationals” List. The Kingpin Act was fashioned mirroring Executive Order 12978, a political decree that governs US economic sanctions against Colombian drug traffickers.
In the 1990s Kingpin Act tentacles successfully strangled Colombian trafficking cartels’ ability to generate huge profits, members’ ability to invest in major businesses and use Colombia’s national banking system curtailed. Successive data identified the total number of Tier I and II drug Kingpins as 164. 48 global names were listed, 34 “companies” in Mexico, Peru and the Caribbean, 82 “individuals” in Mexico, Colombia and the Caribbean.
Jamaica is a ranking Caribbean transit destination for South American cocaine. Suspect companies on the island have been unable to avoid the crippling wrath of Kingpin List designation. US financial and commercial transactions with the Caribbean Beach Park, Caribbean Showplace Ltd, Ramcharan Brothers Ltd and Ramcharan were prohibited by Kingpin List designation, companies’ assets deposited in America frozen.
On February 23, 2017 the Kingpin List was updated, the US Treasury Department removing names of more than 20 Mexican, Colombian and Guatemalan companies. Initially Mexican lawyers, accountants, horse farms, restaurants, boutiques, milk producers, construction companies, day-care centers, air and land transport fleets featured on the Kingpin List, networks of legitimate enterprises used to either conceal or smuggle billions of dollars-worth of drug money earned monthly by Mexican cartels.
On one occasion ten affiliates of “Cazares Salazar Financial Network” (CSFN) functioned as the nucleus of a thriving Sinaloa Cartel money laundering mechanism. A boutique chain, owned by one Mexican Kingpin List designate, operated uninterrupted in the Sinaloan capital Culiacan, the name of a CSFN member, displayed at the top of a printed receipt, verified relationship.
In Colombia the US Kingpin List title is regarded as “Muerte Civil.” During 2014 the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) used the Kingpin List label to shutter a veteran Colombian trafficker’s multi ton cocaine distribution business. For more than ten years the Colombian managed transportation for the valuable white powder, moving from Ecuador to Central America, aboard clandestine semi-submersible watercrafts. Private planes flew smuggling voyages from dispatch points in Colombia and Venezuela to Mexico.
In a Guatemalan Kingpin List scenario one US labeled “Specially Designated Narcotics Trafficker,” wanted both in Guatemala and America for aiding the passage of cocaine for Mexican drug cartels, was detained by Guatemalan National Police officers in the central town El Jicaro. A US Treasury Department report elaborated about how the Guatemalan Kingpin List designate and three sons smuggled cocaine between Colombia, Mexico and America. Guatemala used as transhipment point. Consignments were transferred to Mexican Sinaloa Cartel emissaries who directed the cocaine northward.
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