Mexico’s biggest drug lord, Juarez Cartel boss Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, alias ‘El Viceroy’, brother of the late Mexican drug kingpin, Amado Carrillo, has been sentenced to 28 years in prison.
The sentence was given after the former leader of one of the country’s biggest drug trafficking cartels, was found guilty on Wednesday.
Vicente Carrillo Fuentes took over control of the Juárez cartel after his brother died during botched plastic surgery in 1997, which saw thousands of people murdered in turf wars between rival cartels.
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The 58-year-old was one of the US Drug Enforcement Administration’s (DEA) most wanted men for whose capture they offered a reward of $5m (£3.6m) and was found guilty of drug trafficking and organised crime.
His brother, Amado, who was known as ‘Lord of the Skies’ for his knack of smuggling large quantities of drugs in his private fleet of aeroplanes, had also taken control of the Juárez cartel after killing its previous leader, Rafael Aguilar Guajardo.
Under ‘The Lord of the Skies,’ the cartel became one of the main criminal organisations in Mexico as it gained control of the bulk of cocaine trafficking to the United States.
In 1997, Amado Carrillo Fuentes checked into a Mexican hospital to have plastic surgery to alter his appearance and evade capture but died as a result of the botched operation. The doctors who performed it were killed some months later.
Vicente Carrillo Fuentes built up a complex financial structure to launder the proceeds from the cartel’s drug trafficking.
But during his time at the helm, the Juárez cartel entered into a bloody rivalry with the Sinaloa cartel, led by Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.
The battle with its rivals from Sinaloa left the Juárez cartel seriously weakened but it is still thought to be behind a large number of murders in its stronghold in Ciudad Juárez.
Vicente Carrillo Fuentes’s 28-year-sentence takes into account the years he has already spent in prison since his arrest.
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