Uruguay extradites to the U.S. the brother-in-law of the leader behind powerful Mexican cartel

Uruguay extradited a jailed Mexican cartel leader to the United States during a heavily guarded operation that involved armed military helicopters and trucks on Thursday.

Gerardo González Valencia, a member of the Los Cuinis clan, had been named in an April 2016 indictment by a Washington, D.C., federal court that charged him with conspiring to transport five kilos of cocaine and 500 grams of methamphetamines across the Mexico-U.S. border.

He is the brother-in-law of Nemesio ‘El Mencho’ Oseguera Cervantes, who is the leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, considered Mexico’s most powerful criminal organization, and reportedly headed their money laundering operations.

El Mencho is also wanted by the United States government, which is offering a $10million reward for his capture.

Following rumors of a planned prison escape from Punta de Rieles Prison located in Uruguay’s capital Montevideo, González Valencia was transferred last month to the Libertad Prison in San Jose.

On Thursday, approximately 2:45am local time, González Valencia, who is in his 40s, was driven to a military airfield in Montevideo, where a plane under the supervision of the Drug Enforcement Agency was awaiting the detainee’s transfer.

González Valencia, who is in his 40s, moved his wife Wendy Dalaithy Amaral Arévalo and three children in 2011 to Argentina to head the operation of a company that, according to U.S. officials, diverted proceeds from drugs sales from Mexico to the South American nation.

He then relocated his family to Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay, late in 2011 and was mentioned with his Amaral Arévalo in the leaked Panama Papers in April 2015.

The documents connected González Valencia and Amaral Arévalo to a series of real estate purchases and dealings in the industrial sector.

In August 2015, the U.S. Department of Treasury sanctioned numerous members of Los Cuinis, including González Valencia and Amaral Arévalo.

Uruguayan officials investigated the couple and discovered that they had opened bank accounts through HSBC and owned businesses in Uruguay, Panama and Mexico to launder $10million for Los Cuinis and Jalisco New Generation Cartel.

González Valencia and Amaral Arévalo also put down $2million on a home, which included a soccer field, and purchased about seven luxurious vehicles.

González Valencia was apprehended with his father-in-law and nine other suspects the evening of April 21, 2016 after investigators found clues that he was trying to escape the country for Brazil.

Amaral Arévalo was busted at Carrasco International Airport after arriving on a flight from Mexico two days later. She confessed to narcotics agents that she had returned to Uruguay to pick up her children and take them back to Mexico.

The United States submitted a request for his extradition in 2016 but it had been delayed in court on several occasions by González Valencia’s attorneys.

There were rumblings that González Valencia was about to walk out of prison without being extradited because the Uruguayan government opposed any sentence that would have locked González Valencia away for life or required him to face the death penalty.

González Valencia is the younger brother of Abigail González Valencia, who along with El Mencho founded the Jalisco Generation Cartel and Los Cuinis.

Abigail is currently in prison in Mexico. An attempt to extradite him to the United States was struck down by a Mexican court in January 2019.