Mica for cartelinsider.com
Slim, with a light dark complexion and premature baldness. This is how journalist Anabel Hernández describes José Ángel Rivera Zazueta, also known as ‘El Flaco’.
This is not Flaco Sicario, son of Mayo. The United States identifies El Flaco as one of the leading fentanyl traffickers for the Sinaloa Cartel but also as the principal operator for Ismael ‘El Mayo’ Zambada in Mexico City. This is what is known about him and his influence in the country’s capital.
Although the Pacific Cartel’s longest-serving leader has many individuals in its criminal ranks, few have stood out as much as Rivera Zazueta.
Born on August 15, 1987, in Culiacan, Sinaloa, ‘El Flaco’ quickly climbed the criminal ranks of the Sinaloa Cartel to the point of earning the position once held by Jesus ‘King’ Zambada Garcia, brother of ‘El Mayo’.
The Mexican communicator assures it in her most recent work, entitled The Secret History. AMLO and the Sinaloa Cartel, in which she states that “El Flaco” is the leading operative of “El Mayo” in Mexico City.
According to data obtained by Hernández through an investigation, the main task of Rivera Zazueta in the capital city is to control the Mexico City International Airport (AICM) for the entry and exit of precursors and various narcotics.
In this line, it is stated that the criminal has been bribing members of the Navy, the National Defense Secretariat, the National Guard, and customs authorities present at the airport with thousands of dollars every month, at least since 2020.
It is also said that he has multiple cells in which the criminal organization stores tons of narcotics. Some of them even function as It is one of the main distribution centers for all types of drugs, including fentanyl.
On January 30, 2023, ‘El Flaco’ was designated by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) for acquiring chemical precursors to produce and traffic illicit fentanyl, as well as other synthetic chemicals.
The Department of Treasury said that its criminal network operates globally, with nodes in the United States, Mexico, South and Central America, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia.
But ‘El Flaco’ has not only caught the attention of the country of the stars and stripes.
Hernández reveals in her new book that ‘El Mayo’ sent Rivera Zazueta to Italy in 2019; his objective was to open a new route for cocaine trafficking in Europe.
“Ingenious, he intended to start an air route from the unsuspected Catania Airport in Sicily, which is not usually used for large transnational drug trafficking operations (sic),” he recounted.
Upon his arrival, ‘El Flaco’ also started taking action to open a soap factory that would operate for the Sinaloa Cartel. Possibly, he planned to use the company as a front for money laundering.
However, the plans of the young drug trafficker never came to fruition. Judicial authorities in Italy intercepted calls between ‘El Flaco’ and his accomplices, resulting in the arrest of his two main partners on the Italian peninsula in January 2020.
As a result of these conversations, it is now known that the father of ‘El Flaco’ manages thousands of currency exchange houses in Italy and has contacts within the CIA. It has also been revealed that at one point, he was in a romantic relationship with the granddaughter of Amado Carrillo Fuentes, “The Lord of the Skies.”
On his part, a journalistic investigation published by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) points out that Rivera Zazueta came to live in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. From this port city, the man coordinated the shipment of chemical precursors for ‘El Mayo’.
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Mica
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