Alexander Cifuentes Villa, a Colombian drug trafficker who testified on Thursday in the trial against Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán, confirmed that he cooperated with the Sinaloa Cartel to move drugs through different countries, including Costa Rica.
Cifuentes, arrested in 2014 in Mexico and later extradited to the United States, went to the Court of the Eastern District of New York as a witness of the US Attorney’s Office.
The drug trafficker pointed out that he helped ‘El Chapo’ move cocaine from Colombia, Bolivia and Ecuador, and that for the purposes of the cartel, they bought farms in Honduras and Costa Rica to facilitate the transportation of cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine.
The Colombian confessed that he also helped the group purchase weapons and develop communication systems to avoid the authorities.
The participation of Alexander Cifuentes was no small thing. At some point the Mexican capo described his Colombian collaborator as his “secretary, his right arm and his left arm.”
Cifuentes, whose drug-trafficker brother Jorge also testified at the trial, will continue to give his testimony next Monday.
All of this reaffirms the operation of the Mexican cartel in Costa Rican territory, highlighted by the US Department of Justice when they caught El Chapo. In January 2017, US authorities indicated that the cartel led by Guzmán used trucks to transport drugs from South America through various countries such as Costa Rica.