The drug lord Joaquín Guzmán, commonly known as “El Chapo” entered the United States two times to visit family, while he was escaping from Mexican authorities, according to his daughter Rosa Isela Guzmán Ortiz, who talked to The Guardian.
She added that after El Chapo was interviewed last year by the Hollywood star Sean Penn, he shook off an enormous manhunt in collaboration with corrupt Mexican officials to discard U.S. border controls to get into California.
Moreover, Ms. Guzmán said to The Guardian in an exclusive interview, that senior Mexican politicians had accepted donations from the drug lord, who was one of the most wanted men on Earth when he escaped from prison.
“My dad is not a criminal. The government is guilty,” she told the Guardian.
El Chapo was recaptured in January, seven months after he escaped from a maximum security federal prison in Altiplano, through a tunnel opened into his shower stall. Currently, he is jailed in the same prison, but he has requested extradition to the United States.
According to Rosa Isela Guzmán, his father had planned to cede control of the Sinaloa cartel to her half-brother, Iván Archivaldo, but another cartel member Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada and the Mexican government broke “the agreements” and betrayed him. The Guardian said this is the first time that El Chapo’s daughter has spoken to the media.
During the interview, Guzman Ortiz said that El Chapo entered the United States in late 2015 to visit family members and take a look at her five-bedroom house, which she apparently bought with money deposited by a lawyer of his father. She did not provide details about how he entered U.S. territory, saying “I asked him the same, believe me.” to José Luis Montenegro and Rory Carroll, reporters at The Guardian.
Rosa Isela Guzmán is currently running a chain of small businesses in California, she said to reporters that the money she had received from her father was clean. El Chapo is the former drug lord of the Sinaloa Cartel, considered as the most powerful trafficking organization in the world by the United States Intelligence Community.
“My businesses are the result of my own efforts,” she said to The Guardian.
El Chapo wants extradition from Mexico
On Friday, Mexican lawyer of El Chapo said that the former drug lord is requesting to be extradited to the United States “as soon as possible” because prison conditions of the Altiplano prison are apparently making him sick.
José Refugio Rodríguez Nuñes, who leads El Chapo’s legal defense team, said to CNN on Friday that the former drug lord would declare himself guilty of drug trafficking if U.S. authorities put him in a medium-security prison, where he would be allowed to see family members regularly.
Source: The Guardian