Wife of drug lord El Chapo is arrested

Emma Coronel was arrested for allegedly helping her husband Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzman run his drug empire.

Emma Coronel arrives at court during the trial of her husband, Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzman in Brooklyn in February 2019. Picture: AFP

The US-born wife of imprisoned drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzman was arrested on Tueday AEDT for allegedly helping her husband run his drug empire and carry out an escape from a maximum security Mexican prison, the US Justice Department said.

Emma Coronel, 31, who married Guzman when she was a teenage beauty queen, was arrested at Washington’s Dulles airport. For five years, as her husband was on the run and in prison, Ms Coronel acted as Guzman’s courier, sending instructions to associates that dealt with increasing heroin production, paying bribes, buying weapons, and trying to bust Mr. Guzmán out of prison, according to an arrest affidavit.

Ms Coronel, believed to be Mr Guzman’s third or fourth wife, is charged with conspiring to distribute heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine and marijuana in the US, according to the affidavit, signed by a FBI agent. She couldn’t be reached for comment. Court records don’t list an lawyer for Ms Coronel.

Emma Coronel Aispuro walks out of Brooklyn Federal Court in 2019. Picture: AFP

The arrest of Ms Coronel could add new friction to US-Mexico relations. It comes months after the October arrest in Los Angeles of General Salvador Cienfuegos, Mexico’s former defence minister, as he and his family arrived on a family vacation. A month later, US officials dropped charges after Mexico complained that it had been kept in the dark about the US investigation and threatened to cut off antidrug co-operation.

The former general was then returned to Mexico where he was eventually cleared of charges after Mexican prosecutors said the US case was weak. The US Department of Justice said it stood by its case.

Within weeks of the general’s return, the leftist nationalist government of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador passed a new law restricting U.S. agents’ activities in Mexico, and analysts say the moves on both sides reduced antidrug co-operation to its lowest level in many years. As president, Mr Lopez Obrador has expressed sympathy for the fate of the imprisoned drug lord, and promised Mr Guzman’s mother he would intercede with US authorities to obtain a visa so she could visit her son.

Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzman. Picture: AFP

Ms Coronel’s arrest sends a message that despite the release of General Cienfuegos, there are many other cases in the pipeline, said Alejandro Hope, a Mexico City based security consultant. “The system doesn’t stop, ” said Mr Hope. “Who knows how many open investigations there are?”

Ms Coronel attracted media attention during the 2019 New York trial of her husband, who was sentenced to life in prison. During the trial, she attended daily, dressed fashionably and wore dark sunglasses. She seemed impassive even as texts between Mr Guzman and a mistress were read aloud in court.

While the spouses of drug lords are rarely targeted for arrest, US prosecutors say Ms Coronel played a key role in the planning of Guzman’s escape from a maximum-security prison, where he was sent after his capture by Mexican security forces in 2014, the affidavit said. She used frequent prison visits with her husband to relay instructions to his sons and associates who built a 1600m tunnel from an abandoned warehouse to the bathroom in the drug lord’s prison cell. In 2015, Mr Guzman used the tunnel to escape, deeply embarrassing the Mexican government.

After Mr Guzman was recaptured and returned to the same prison, Ms Coronel continued to meet with her husband and again plotted to help him escape, the affidavit said. That escape attempt was foiled when Guzman was transferred to another prison, despite the payment, according to Ms Coronel, of $US2m to the Mexican official in charge of the prison system, the affidavit says.

Ms Coronel also helped Guzman run his drug empire while he was in prison in Mexico, the affidavit alleges. In a letter from Guzman that she relayed to an associate named Cleto, Guzman ordered the cartel to “increase the production so that it yields … because I have a lot of expenses here.” The increased production, according to the affidavit, refers to a heroin production, and the expenses to the bribes that Guzman had to pay in prison, the affidavit says.

Guzman was extradited to the U.S. in 2017.

Ms Coronel, a dual US-Mexican citizen, was born in California. She is the daughter of a prominent member of the Sinaloa drug cartel, a Mexican drug trafficker who is serving a 10-year prison sentence.

In 2007 or 2008, Mexican officials say that Guzman and hundreds of gunmen took over a remote Mexican village and hosted a party with cases of whiskey and a norteño band to see Coronel crowned the winner of a local beauty pageant. He married her months later.

Coronel is the mother of nine-year-old twin girls, Guzman’s youngest children.

The Wall Street Journal