MEXICO CITY – The US-born wife of imprisoned drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán was arrested Monday for allegedly helping her husband run his drug empire and escape from a Mexican maximum security prison, the US Department said of Justice.
Emma Coronel, 31, who married Mr. Guzmán when she was a teenage beauty queen, was arrested at Dulles airport in Washington. For five years, while her husband was on the run and in prison, Ms. Coronel acted as Mr. Guzmán’s courier, sending instructions to associates engaged in increasing heroin production, paying bribes, buying weapons and trying to arrest Mr. Guzmán. from prison, according to a sworn arrest.
Ms. Coronel, believed to be Mr. Guzmán’s third or fourth wife, is charged with conspiring to distribute heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine and marijuana in the US, according to the affidavit signed by an agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. She was not available for comment. There is no attorney for Ms. Coronel in the court records.
Ms. Coronel’s arrest could create new friction in US-Mexico relations. It comes months after the arrest in October of General Salvador Cienfuegos, Mexico’s former defense minister, when he and his family arrived in Los Angeles on a family vacation. A month later, US officials dropped the charges after Mexico complained that it had been kept in the dark about the US investigation and threatened to end its collaboration on drugs.
The former general was then returned to Mexico, where he was eventually acquitted after Mexican prosecutors said the US case was weak. The United States Department of Justice said it was behind his case.