WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — La Oficina de Envigado, a Medellin based cartel, was first designated as a narcotics trafficking organization under the Kingpin Act in June 2014. Clan Usuga, Colombia’s largest cartel, was first designated in May 2013.
Both organizations have been implicated in money laundering, extortion, murder and drug trafficking, OFAC said.
“La Oficina and Clan Usuga rely on powerful narcotics traffickers like those targeted today, who provide funding in exchange for protection for their narcotics trafficking and other criminal activities,” US Treasury Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) Acting Director John Smith said on Wednesday.
The designation of four people tied to La Oficina de Envigado and one person tied to Clan Usuga under the Kingpin Act freezes those individuals’ assets in the United States and prohibits US persons from transacting with them.
The designation comes a day after US prosecutors unveiled indictments against 17 Clan Usuga members in New York and Miami courts for trafficking drugs into the United States over several years.
Many of the 17 Usuga members are still at large in Colombia, including the cartel’s leader Dairo Antonio Usuga David.
