The United States Department of Justice has requested four years in prison for Emma Coronel, the wife of drug trafficker Joaquín El Chapo Guzmán, who pleaded guilty to three drug trafficking offenses within the structure of the Sinaloa cartel led by her husband. In addition, the Prosecutor’s Office also demands that the judge issue an order to seize Coronel’s assets for an amount of almost 1.5 million dollars, according to the documents presented in court. The United States also requests five years of probation for Coronel. Sentence will be handed down on November 30.
Coronel, 32, is charged with trafficking in cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin and marijuana, conspiracy, money laundering and participating in transactions with a foreign drug trafficker. The United States accuses Coronel of having helped El Chapo carry out one of the most mediatic escapes in history: his escape from the Mexican high-security prison of El Altiplano, in the summer of 2015, through a tunnel that he connected his cell shower to a safe house via rails and a motorcycle. According to the US authorities, Coronel was plotting another escape with Guzmán’s people in 2017, shortly before the kingpin’s extradition to the United States.
In 2019, Guzmán Loera was sentenced in a New York court to life in prison for drug trafficking, more than 30 years in prison for gun violence and 20 years for money laundering. Since then, he has been held in the Supermax prison in Colorado, the safest federal prison in the United States.
For the US Administration, Coronel benefited from Joaquín Guzmán’s illicit businesses and even when he was in prison, the court document assures. “The defendant lived, owned and controlled residences paid for with Guzmán’s drug trafficking proceeds, which included both residential and commercial properties,” the government’s note reads.
The former beauty queen from Sinaloa, of Mexican and American nationality, was arrested last February at Dulles International Airport, outside Washington, and has been incarcerated ever since. During the trial, US authorities produced documents showing that El Chapo’s loyal wife transmitted his orders from 2012 to 2014 to carry out drug shipments, as well as helping him evade capture for years.
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