The three traffickers, of Chinese, Ukrainian and Lithuanian nationalities, were arrested by Moroccan authorities on April 17, on the basis of international arrest warrants issued by U.S. authorities.
They were extradited to the U.S., where they first appeared before a magistrate in the Southern District of New York, whose office investigates some of America’s most sensitive and high-profile cases.
Xiang Gao, Oleksandr Klochkov and Igors Kricfalusijs were arrested during simultaneous security operations in Marrakech, as part of the privileged bilateral cooperation between Moroccan and U.S. security services. The defendants, aged between 22 and 25, were charged in New York with conspiracy to traffic and distribute fentanyl and methamphetamine in the United States, and with laundering the proceeds of such trafficking.
The elimination of these high-profile traffickers was made possible thanks to the vigilance, responsiveness and cooperation of the Moroccan security services and their efforts to track down internationally wanted persons in transnational crime cases.
“Fentanyl and fentanyl analogues continue to wreak catastrophic damage on the lives of New Yorkers. The defendants are alleged to have aggressively pursued methods to circumvent our ability to stem the flow of the poisons into this country and to bring tons of potentially deadly chemicals to the United States,” Acting United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Edward Y. Kim, said in a press release.
For his part, U.S. Attorney General, Merrick B. Garland, stressed that “those responsible for flooding our country with fentanyl must answer for their crimes.”
Meanwhile, Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Administrator, Anne Milgram, said that the “announcement of charges against three high-level fentanyl chemical brokers highlights DEA’s commitment to attack every part of the global fentanyl supply chain.“
She said that the three defendants “brokered ton-quantities of fentanyl and methamphetamine precursor chemicals from China, knowing that these chemicals would be used to flood American communities with deadly drugs.”
“These defendants also coached drug traffickers on how to use different precursor chemicals to make finished fentanyl destined for the United States,” she pointed out, adding that their indictment “should serve as a warning to drug traffickers operating across the globe.”
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