A leaked report of Mexico’s military attaché in Colombia linked the bank of the controversial Char Clan to Sinaloa Cartel drug trafficking operations.
According to the leaked intelligence report, the Sinaloa Cartel has consolidated control over Colombia’s Caribbean ports in Barranquilla, Santa Marta and Cartagena, according to news website Eje Central.
Mexico’s military attaché said that human sources said that the Sinaloa Cartel factions of “El Mayo” and the sons of convicted drug trafficker Joaquin Guzman have a “strong presence” in the Caribbean region.
Mexican intelligence
This claim is consistent with warnings of Colombia’s Ombudsman’s Office about Mexican cartel involvement in drug trafficking in the Caribbean region since 2020.
But the Mexican intelligence report went further, claiming that “in order to guarantee their operational capacity, they have built a financial apparatus to mobilize the income derived from their criminal activities through the Colombian banking system.”
In fact, the Mexicans claimed that Alex Char, who is running for mayor in Barranquilla, met with representatives from the Sinaloa Cartel factions in 2021 in order to “facilitate operations in the Barranquilla Port Society and in Serfinanza,” the Char Clan’s bank, which has dozens of branches throughout Colombia.
The Char family is also a major stakeholder in the Barranquilla Port Society, which runs the Caribbean container port.
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According to Mexico’s military intelligence, the meetings took place in the “White House,” a Char Clan office that was raided by prosecutors as part of an election fraud investigation in 2018.
Mexican intelligence
Intelligence officers were also able to establish that El Mayo’s emissary in Colombia, Abel Diaz, made a phone call to the Char Clan’s mayoral candidate, according to Eje Central.
The questionable power of Colombia’s Char Clan
In response to the report, President Gustavo Petro called on Colombia’s banking regulator to investigate Serfinanza’s .
The Char Clan’s bank denied any links to Mesican drug trafficking operations.
The clan’s mayoral candidate said that the Mexican news website tried to undermine his election campaign.
Char’s jailed brother, former Senate President Arturo Char, was arrested on Supreme Court charges of election fraud in September.