Today, the United States Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) designated three (3) individuals with purported links to Joaquin Guzman Loera (a.k.a. Chapo Guzman) as Specially Designated Narcotics Traffickers (SDNTKs) pursuant to the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act (Kingpin Act). Due to these designations U.S. persons will be prohibited from engaging in any transactions with such individuals and any assets they may have under U.S. jurisdiction are to be blocked.

Two of the individuals designated, Oscar Alvarez Zepeda and Joel Valdez Benites, are Mexican nationals from Culiacan, Sinaloa, Mexico. The other individual, Carlos Mario Torres Hoyos is a Colombian national from Medellin, Colombia. According to OFAC, these individuals are accused of providing material support to the drug trafficking activities of the Sinaloa Cartel and are also alleged to have ties to Jorge Milton Cifuentes Villa. Oscar Alvarez Zepeda is the brother of the previously-designated Mexican national Alfredo Alvarez Zepeda. The Alvarez Zepeda brothers are believed to be relatives of Chapo Guzman.

Not only were Guzman Loera and Jorge Milton Cifuentes Villa designated by OFAC, they were also indicted on drug trafficking and/or money laundering charges in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida in November 2010. Jorge Milton Cifuentes Villa was also indicted on drug trafficking charges in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York in February 2011.

In addition to OFAC’s designations today, the agency also removed 64 individuals and entities from the OFAC SDN List who had been designated under the anti-narcotics trafficking sanctions or the Iraq 2 sanctions programs. OFAC has made it a habit of announcing large scale removals when they do decide to rescind designations. It is likely that this latest batch of SDN removals were all in some way related as many of them were initially designated under the Columbia Sanctions Program, which is an older program designed to target those individuals involved in narcotics trafficking originating out of Columbia. While the Columbia program is still used from time to time to designate parties, most of the counter narcotics trafficking designations are usually made pursuant to the Kingpin Act now.

The author of this blog is Erich Ferrari, an attorney specializing in OFAC matters. If you have any questions please contact him at 202-280-6370 or ferrari@ferrari-legal.com.