The U.S. Treasury Department on Wednesday blacklisted three people and one company it says are linked to Juan Jose Esparragoza Moreno, a leader of Mexico's Sinaloa cartel.
The targets were Desarrollos Everest, S.A. de C.V., a real estate development company based in Culiacan, Mexico as well as Jorge Enrique Esquerra Esquer, Julio Cesar Estrada Gutierrez, and Carlos Alberto Leon Santiesteban.
As a result, the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act prohibits U.S. persons from conducting financial or commercial transactions with the designees and freezes any assets they may have under U.S. jurisdiction.
This action comes one day after British bank HSBC admitted that its anti-money laundering weaknesses during the 2000s allowed the Sinaloa cartel and one of its Colombian counterparts to launder $881 million.
This is not the first action Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has taken against the cartel this year, however.
"Since July, OFAC has exposed numerous
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