The US Department of Justice on Friday filed criminal charges against four Chinese companies and eight individuals for allegedly trafficking the chemicals used to manufacture the highly addictive painkiller fentanyl in the United States and Mexico.
The three unsealed indictments in a New York federal court represent the first court actions to indict China-based chemical companies and Chinese nationals for illegally selling the substances used to make fentanylto which a fatal overdose crisis is attributed.
Federal prosecutors said the companies marketed the fentanyl precursor chemicals on their websites and social media accounts, announced they accepted cryptocurrency payments, and sent them to drug traffickers, including Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel.
“When I announced in April that the Department of Justice had taken significant enforcement action against the Sinaloa cartel, I promised that the Department of Justice would never forget the victims of the fentanyl epidemic,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement. Press conference.
Garland noted that those actions include stopping China’s chemical companies “from supplying the cartels with the building blocks they need to make the deadly fentanyl.”
In a statement, Liu Pengyu, a spokesman for the Chinese embassy, accused US prosecutors of imposing “long-arm jurisdiction,” adding that the move could harm counternarcotics operations between the two countries.
“The incident was a well-planned scam operation carried out by the US side, which seriously infringed the legitimate rights of the relevant companies and individuals,” the spokesperson said. “China strongly condemns it.”
An unsealed indictment in Manhattan federal court charges Hubei Amarvel Biotech Co., as well as three company executives, with trafficking fentanyl, importing precursor chemicals, and money laundering.
Prosecutors said Amarvel Biotech used deceptive practices to evade authorities, including announcing that it could pass off its products as dog food, nuts or motor oil to ensure “safe” delivery to the United States and Mexico.
Two Amarvel Biotech executives were arrested a few weeks ago and appeared before a trial judge in Honolulu. They will be brought to New York to appear in Manhattan federal court. The third accused executive has not been arrested.
Another two indictments unsealed in a Brooklyn federal court charge five other executives or employees and three Chinese companies, identified as Anhui Rencheng Technology Co., Anhui Moker New Material Technology Co. and Hefei GSK Trade Co., with crimes that include association criminal association to manufacture and distribute fentanyl, and criminal association to commit customs fraud. None of these individuals have been arrested.
U.S. Attorney Breon Peace said the defendants “knowingly distributed fentanyl precursor chemicals to the United States and Mexico” and provided advice “how they should be used to manufacture this dangerous drug.”
DEA administrator Anne Milgram said the companies and individuals provided drug traffickers with “the ingredients and scientific knowledge necessary to produce fentanyl, a drug that continues to devastate families and communities in all over the United States, killing Americans of all classes social”.
At the moment there was no information about the defendants’ lawyers.
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