MEXICO CITY, Distrito Federal: A Mexican woman dubbed the ‘Queen of the Pacific’ for her links to drug trafficking returned home Tuesday to face money laundering charges after the United States deported her.
Sandra Avila Beltran, who was convicted by a US court for helping a drug lord evade arrest, stepped off an airplane in handcuffs, with her long dark hair disheveled and graying, after landing in Mexico City on a special US flight that repatriates migrants.
After a medical check-up, Avila Beltran, who made headlines by flashing a smile to news cameras following her first arrest in 2007, was taken to a women’s federal prison in the western state of Nayarit, said federal prosecutor Mariana Benitez on Twitter.
The 52-year-old got her nickname from a Mexican drug ballad, a form of popular music popular in the Mexican underworld and known as a narcocorrido, and her life in the criminal underworld inspired a soap opera.
While she admits knowing famous drug kingpins, she has denied trafficking drugs herself, insisting that she amassed her fortune through real estate deals and her work in fashion.
The attorney general’s office said Avila Beltran was taken into custody under an arrest order granted by a judge in the western state of Jalisco “for the crime of operations with illegal resources.”
The money laundering case had been suspended when she was extradited to the United States in August 2012.
When Mexican authorities first detained her six years ago, they presented her as a member of the infamous Sinaloa drug cartel who played a key role in drug smuggling to the United States via the Pacific Ocean.
Authorities at the time seized hundreds of pieces of jewelry, several luxury cars, properties and 14 bank accounts.
But she was acquitted in Mexico and then extradited to the United States last year.
US authorities had accused her of conspiring to import five kilograms of cocaine between 1999 and 2004.
But she struck a plea bargain that resulted in her conviction on one charge of accessory after the fact in keeping her ex-boyfriend, Colombian drug trafficker Juan Diego Espinosa “El Tigre,” from being apprehended.
Last month, a US judge sentenced her to 70 months in prison but then ordered her release and deportation due to time already served in Mexico and the United States.
She was transferred to an immigration center in El Paso, Texas, before being flown home under police custody along with 128 other deportees in a weekly flight that returns migrants deep into Mexico, according to US immigration authorities.
Avila Beltran has been linked to some of the biggest names in Mexican drug running. — AFP