The US justice department has filed criminal charges against four Chinese chemical manufacturing companies and eight individuals over allegations they illegally trafficked the chemicals used to make fentanyl, a highly addictive painkiller that has fueled the opioid crisis in the United States.
It is the first time the United States has charged Chinese companies for trafficking fentanyl precursor chemicals inside the United States, rather than shipping them to Mexico, the origin of most of the fentanyl found in the country.
“These companies and their employees knowingly conspired to manufacture deadly fentanyl for distribution in the United States,” the attorney general, Merrick Garland, announced on Friday.
“Just one of these China-based chemical companies shipped more than 200 kilograms of fentanyl-related precursor chemicals to the US for the purpose of making 50 kilograms of fentanyl, a quantity that could contain enough deadly doses of fentanyl to kill 25 million Americans,” said Garland.
The companies at the heart of the three separate indictments are accused of selling precursor chemicals to the Sinaloa cartel in Mexico, who in turn have helped to flood the United States with the drug.
The case comes about two months after the justice department previously charged leaders of the cartel with running a fentanyl trafficking operation fueled by Chinese chemical companies, including three sons of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, the onetime leader of the Sinaloa cartel now imprisoned in the United States.
The deputy attorney general, Lisa Monaco, the department’s No 2 official, said on Friday the cases “break new ground by attacking the fentanyl supply chain at its origin”.
“Fentanyl poses a singular threat, not only because the smallest doses can be lethal, but because fentanyl does not occur in nature. It is entirely man-made,” she added.
The Chinese embassy did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the allegations.
In Manhattan’s southern district, federal prosecutors announced the unsealing of an indictment against the China-based chemical company Hubei Amarvel Biotech, along with its executives Qingzhou Wang, 35, Yiyi Chen, 31, and Fnu Lnu, also known as Er Yang, with fentanyl trafficking, precursor chemical importation and money-laundering offenses.
Undercover Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) sources posing as fentanyl manufacturers met with Wang and Chen earlier this year and agreed to buy 210kg of fentanyl precursors in exchange for payment in cryptocurrency, authorities said. The DEA retrieved the chemicals from a Los Angeles warehouse in May.
Wang and Chen were arrested by the federal agents from the US Drug Enforcement Administration on 8 June and ordered detained by a federal magistrate judge in Honolulu, Hawaii, on 9 June until they can be transported to New York City to appear before the judge handling the case. Yang remains at large.
In the eastern district of New York, meanwhile, prosecutors announced the unsealing of two more indictments against three other Chinese companies and individuals, accusing them of conspiring to manufacture and distribute fentanyl in the United States.
