Cuba captures Chinese fentanyl kingpin wanted by Mexico, US
MEXICO CITY: Cuba has arrested a Chinese fentanyl kingpin who escaped custody in Mexico in July and is also wanted by the United States, Mexican security sources told AFP on Wednesday (Oct 22).
The trafficker Zhi Dong Zhang, known by the alias “Brother Wang,” will remain in Cuba pending a decision on his possible extradition, the sources said.
Zhi is accused of working closely with Mexico’s Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation cartels, both designated “foreign terrorist organisations” by Washington.
He was detained in Mexico in October 2024 and held in a Mexico City prison awaiting a hearing on his extradition to the United States, where he faces money-laundering charges. He was later granted house arrest, from which he escaped in July.
LINKS TO GLOBAL FENTANYL TRADE
Zhi is considered “a major international money laundering operator,” Mexican Security Secretary Omar Garcia Harfuch said last year.
The trafficker was allegedly responsible for building networks with cartels to move fentanyl from China to Central America, South America, Europe and the United States, he added.
Washington under President Donald Trump has pressed both Mexico and China to curb the trafficking of fentanyl, a synthetic opioid 50 times stronger than heroin and far cheaper to produce. It has also fuelled a deadly overdose crisis in the US.
Fentanyl has largely replaced heroin and prescription opioids such as oxycodone as a cause of overdoses, which now kill tens of thousands of Americans each year.
EXTRADITION TALKS UNDERWAY
President Claudia Sheinbaum’s government has intensified drug seizures under tariff pressure from Trump, who has threatened punitive measures unless Mexico reduces fentanyl flows.
While Mexico remains the main source of fentanyl sold in the United States, Washington has increasingly targeted China-based suppliers of precursor chemicals used to produce the drug.
From Havana, two sources close to the case told AFP that Zhi will be extradited to Mexico, although no date or details have been provided.
Cuba’s Communist government has not yet issued an official statement on the arrest.
