Chinese fentanyl kingpin Zhi Dong Zhang to be returned to Mexico from Cuba

Zhi Dong Zhang’s latest bid to evade justice has come to an end. Cuban authorities have notified their Mexican counterparts that they have arrested the Chinese drug lord, who fled Mexico City in the summer, and that he will now be transferred back. Zhang is accused of money laundering and drug trafficking through a criminal organization with links to the Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG). He is a priority target for the United States, which is awaiting his extradition once he is returned to Mexico. Estimates of the amount of drugs Zhang was transporting from Mexico to the U.S. amount to more than 1,000 kilograms of cocaine and nearly 2,000 kilograms of fentanyl.

After his escape in July, official Mexican sources confirmed to EL PAÍS that Brother Wang, one of his aliases, was in Cuba, where he arrived with a false passport after being denied entry to Russia for the same reason. Mexico was waiting for the Cuban authorities to conclude their interrogation in order to receive him and, automatically, according to the same sources, extradite him to the United States.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has been pursuing Zhang for some time, accusing him of running a criminal network that has been working for both of Mexico’s main cartels since at least 2016. Zhang’s organization is based in Los Angeles, California, and Atlanta, Georgia, but has links in Central America, South America, Europe, and Asia. His escape from Mexico City, confirmed on July 11, generated much controversy. He was in a maximum-security prison until a judge granted him house arrest, from where he escaped despite being under military custody.

The judge’s decision was criticized even by the president, Claudia Sheinbaum. In the midst of negotiating a security agreement with the U.S., which considers fentanyl to be public enemy number one, the president came out to defend her government’s progress in the fight against crime and attacked the court’s decision. “The judge, without any supporting arguments, because the Prosecutor’s Office was presenting all the arguments, granted him house arrest. That ruling should never have come from a judge. How was that possible?“ said Sheinbaum, who argued that her government has been insisting ”on the corruption of the judiciary.”

The Chinese drug lord’s escape also came at a particularly sensitive time. Six days earlier, a federal court in Georgia had issued new charges against Brother Wang. Specifically, he is accused of laundering at least $20 million in the United States between 2020 and 2021 alone, through a complex network of more than 150 shell companies and 170 bank accounts.

The net closed in on Zhang following the recent arrest of one of his operators, Ruipeng Li, from whom hundreds of bank documents linked to Zhang were confiscated. According to the Georgia court complaint, to which this newspaper has had access, Li explained to the U.S. authorities how the criminal business was organized. On the one hand, a Mexican cell was responsible for collecting the money from the sale of drugs to the final traffickers. On the one hand, a Mexican cell was responsible for collecting the money from drug sales to the final traffickers. On the other, a Chinese cell was dedicated to receiving this dirty money and laundering it through the network of companies and bank accounts.

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