Joaquín Guzmán, once the most wanted drug lord in the world, keeps track of him every day of the trial in silence, wearing an unusual outfit with a tie and suit. Judges and jurors have heard nine of the 16 charge witnesses named by the prosecution. The trial participants and the audience in the federal district court in New York's Brooklyn district open the statements deep insights into the business, in which Guzmán was, according to the investigators, one of the most powerful figures.

The observers have learned how to generate billions in sales with a criminal empire, how and where Guzmán and his Sinaloa cartel got their cocaine, what their profit margins were and probably still are. Smuggling routes, money laundering strategies, brutal gang fights, personal revenge and millions of dollars in kickbacks that Sinaloa bosses use to buy their freedom and protection: that's something you know more about now, too.

Two things are already obvious:

  • The defense will hardly succeed in maintaining its line, the 61-year-old Guzmán is not even the head of the Sinaloa Syndicate. Too overwhelming are the statements of the witnesses, the recordings of the intercepted phone calls, the descriptions of how everything converged on Guzmán, how he ordered murders and led negotiations on the conditions of drug deliveries.
  • The process has shown how deep corruption in Mexico reaches, how corrupt politicians, judges, prosecutors, soldiers and police officers are. Even Mexican world companies such as Petroleos Mexicanos negotiated with the criminals according to the findings of the previous evidence.

Among the witnesses were Guzmán's former subordinate, his main supplier of cocaine from Colombia, whose lawyer, the man who brought "El Chapos" drugs to the US market. And above all there was Jesús Vicente Zambada Niebla aka El Vicentillo. He is something of the prosecution witness.

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Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán: drug lord in court

"El Vicentillo" is the eldest son of Guzmán's eternal companion Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada. Together they have made the Sinaloa Cartel great. While El Mayo is still on top of the list of drug investigators, investigators took his son in 2009 in Mexico City. A year later, the Mexicans delivered the man to the United States.

Zambada junior was one of the leaders of the cartel. Hardly anyone knows the inner life of the Sinaloa Syndicate better, even at puberty his father introduced him to the business. He was present at meetings of the Narcos or in collusion with police officers. At 15, Vicente Zambada met Guzmán. "I gradually understood how it all worked and slowly grew into the business," he said.

Zambada junior testified that his father and Guzmán spent $ 1 million a month between 2001 and 2008 for bribing police at all levels, senior military officials, politicians and ordinary government officials. On the payroll of Sinaloa, according to the witness, generals like Marco Antonio de León Adams, chief bodyguards of then President Vicente Fox (2001-2006). The military allegedly was a friend of Zambada senior and received $ 50,000 a month for his services from the cartel.

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It is clear that "El Chapo" was also a big hit in the business, because Mexican authorities and politicians allowed him and supported him. "Corruption and impunity," says Francisco Jiménez Reynoso, an expert at the University of Guadalajara, is the formula that would have allowed "El Chapo" and "El Mayo" to pursue their business undisturbed for so long: Colombian cocaine via Mexico to the US as well as heroin, marijuana and synthetic drugs - produced in Mexico.

The detained Colombian Jorge Cifuentes, once a close confidant of Guzmán, reported in his interrogation in mid-December, how Chapo even with the then rebel rebels of Farc in Colombia bought his cocaine and this brought across Ecuador in fish trawlers and speedboats north.

According to Cifuentes, the Sinaloa cartel bought one kilo of cocaine for $ 3,000 at the beginning of the noughties and sold it for 11,000. The first 6,000 kilo delivery, which Cifuentes brokered, brought the cartel a profit of $ 48 million. To the commission of 25 per cent, negotiator Cifuentes was cheated by "El Chapo".

This is another lesson of the process: Guzmán was as clever as successful in his criminal business. But he also betrayed friends and enemies and cheated on everyone and everyone in order to stay in power for as long as possible. Some of them have testified against him.