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Behind the El Chapo trial: what's been left unsaid in a New York courtroom
 BLUF:[Guardian] Also excluded was an attempt by the defence to ask prosecution witnesses about "Operation Fast and Furious", a project run by the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to allow weapons to enter Mexico illegally, through cooperating straw-buyers, in hopes of catching their final recipients. Of the 2,000 guns allowed to "walk" between 2007 and 2011, only 665 were recovered, one of them in Guzmán’s’s lair in 2014 ‐ but none of this can feature at trial. The evidence about money has been detailed when it is "back in Mexico", but coy when it moves beyond there. Martínez flew planes loaded with cash ‐ between $8m and $10m from Tijuana three times a month ‐ and hauled a Samsonite case filled with $10m to "a Mexico City bank" monthly. Cash deposits are described hidden beneath beds and even underwater. But there the money-trail ends, though the US Senate’s and Department of Justice’s own investigations have established that hundreds of millions proceeded through the Wachovia and HSBC banks north of the border ‐ these play no part in evidence hitherto. Lengthy article Posted by: Besoeker 2019-01-03 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=531129 |