Business Behind Bars

Hole of Justice

By Peter G. Jimenea

 Business Behind Bars

“In underworld business, criminals have no way to approach the Court of law for the settlement of differences. Death is their logical solution to all judicial problems.”

On April 29, 2015, an inmate (name withheld to protect the family) at the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology (BJMP) Ungka District Jail in Jaro, Iloilo City, was reported to have committed suicide inside his cell.

Three days later, May 3, 2015, another inmate in the same compound was reported to have also committed suicide. But they were suspect-victims of foul play due to traces of torture and punctured wounds on the head of one.

This reminds me of the arrest of notorious Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman of the dreaded Sinaloa Cartel on February 2015, this year, in Northern Mexico. He is a powerful drug lord and kingpin of his time facing multiple indictments in the US Court.

Unlike the Chinese Triads, Mexican drug lords are pompous, noisy but also bold-players. Mexicans have that large propensity to engage their rivals in cut-throat competition rather than cooperation. A practice no longer in the Sicilian Mafia’s mindset syndrome.

Records show that Sinaloa Cartel grabbed control of Carrillo Fuentes’ criminal organization in Ciudad Juárez, a much fought over entry point across from El Paso, Texas. Gabino Salas Valenciano is El Chapo’s point man running the cartel’s business in Ciudad Juárez.

One of his jobs was to hire arms dealers, drug traffickers and assassins in the U.S. to eliminate debtors who did not pay their debts. The story described drug trafficker Sergio Saucedo’s death. The latter is suspect to have unpaid debts with El Chapo and had tried to swindle him.

On August 5, 2009, at Sierra Blanca, Texas inspection station, agents stopped two persons with a trailer containing 303.9 kilos of marijuana that Saucedo was trying to smuggle from Mexico. This tells Saucedo’s downfall and assassination.

A month later, on September 3, a group of masked gunmen from the U.S.–broke into a house in Horizon City, in the suburbs of El Paso, and kidnapped Saucedo in a maroon-colored Ford Expedition. But their three unmasked accomplice were arrested for questioning.

The U.S. District Court of Western Texas, shows that in 2009 the three suspect-defendants Cesar Piñeda, Francisco Javier “El Pichas” Pulido, and Carlos Cuellar admitted they were paid $250,000 by Valenciano for delivering Saucedo.

Pineda testified, “The men wearing masks, moved Saucedo from their car and put him in the rear seat of the car I was driving. I drove to Mexico across the Fabens Port of Entry, then to La Cabaña, a weapons storage house, in the Juarez Valley where a group of ten armed men are waiting.”

Pineda claimed another defendant Pulido told him that Saucedo had stolen more than 600 pounds of marijuana and that Salas Valenciano, El Chapo’s man in Ciudad Juárez, paid $250,000 to US based hoodlums for the kidnapping of Saucedo.

Pineda was arrested in Texas on May 2011, plead guilty to charges of conspiracy to commit homicide in foreign country, sentenced to 240 months in prison. Cuellar was arrested October of the same year for trafficking marijuana, sentenced to 150 months in prison. Pulido was captured in April 2013 in Northern Mexico and extradited to the U.S.

Five days later after his kidnapping, on September 8, 2009, Saucedo’s body was found on the banks of the Rio Grande river semi-nude, with signs of torture and with cut-off hands placed over his chest, a sign of not paying debts.

Salas Valenciano, El Chapo’s representative, ran the cartel business in Ciudad Juárez while the latter is in prison. The man is remorseless and has the temerity to hire arm dealers, drug traffickers and assassins to deliver this message to debtors – “TILL DEBT DO US PART.”