U.S. Treasury Adds Sanctions to Drug Trafficker’s Illicit Network

Mexico City | June 12, 2009

The U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) today added 15 entities and 9 individuals in Mexico, Colombia and the Caribbean to its list of Specially Designated Narcotics Traffickers (SDNTs); these entities and individuals are linked to Fabio Enrique Ochoa Vasco (a.k.a. “Juan Carlos Martinez Perez”), a significant Colombian drug trafficker who was designated as an SDNT principal in 2007. Today’s designation action freezes any assets the designees may have that are subject to U.S. jurisdiction, and prohibits all financial and commercial transactions by any U.S. person with the designated companies and individuals.

Today’s OFAC designation exposes a Guadalajara, Mexico -based network of companies controlled by a previously designated key Ochoa Vasco front man, Luis Pacheco Mejia. These Mexican companies include an agricultural company, Granoproductos Agricolas, S.A. de C.V., as well as construction and real estate companies such as Grupo C.L.P. Constructora, S.A. de C.V., Grupo Constructor Inmobiliario Pacar, S.A. de C.V., and Cimientos La Torre, S.A. de C.V.

In addition, today’s OFAC action targets several Mexican nationals in Guadalajara: Juan Cardenas Real, Jose Luis Lares Rangel, Jorge Octavio Lopez Rodriguez, Mario Antonio Flores Salinas, and Luz del Rocio Arambula Garcia. These individuals are involved in the management of front companies and are complicit in the money laundering activities of the Ochoa Vasco organization.

OFAC recognizes the efforts of Mexican authorities in attacking this organization, as the investigation that led to today’s designations involved local, state and federal agencies in the United States, as well as collaboration with foreign governments.

To read the full text of the OFAC press release, please go to:
http://www.treas.gov/press/releases/tg169.htm