Colombian police Wednesday announced the arrest of a woman whom they claim worked as a front for the money laundering activities of the Mexican Sinaloa drug cartel.
Dolly Cifuentes Villa, who was arrested on Tuesday, is said to be a close associate of Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, the leader of the cartel and Mexico’s most wanted man.
She was taken into custody in a fashionable suburb of the city of Medellin.
“In the last few hours in Medellin, we have captured Dolly Cifuentes Villa, a person that has one of the highest drug-related criminal records between Colombia and Mexico,” Colombia’s police chief, General Oscar Naranjo, told reporters on Wednesday.
Known as ‘La Meno,’ Villa was responsible for 32 business in Colombia and 17 outside the country that were put to use by Guzman, according to police.
She is also the sister of Francisco Cifuentes Villa, who authorities say worked as Guzman’s pilot.
“We are talking about a woman who in the last few years was dedicated to generating an entire criminal organization around ‘Chapo’ Guzman – a criminal organization specifically designed to establish an emporium of businesses that operate with front men in order to launder money for the Sinaloa cartel,” Naranjo said.
A decade after Guzman escaped from prison, the Sinaloa drug cartel is the most powerful organized crime gang in the Americas and is based on Mexico’s Pacific coast.