Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Case Blocked by Weak Government Laws in Mexico?

Critics have pointed to the weakness of the Mexican government as the primary reason why Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzmán is successfully evading authorities.

"Mexico is a weak state that has yet to form a political will around the implementation of such laws," said lawyer Edgardo Buscaglia, who has addressed the Mexican Senate on asset forfeitures, as quoted in a report from USA Today.

As part of the manhunt for Guzmán, who escaped from a maximum security prison in July, Mexican authorities recently revealed that they have confiscated a total of 11 planes, eight vehicles, and six houses belonging to the head of the Sinaloa Cartel in the past five months, USA Today wrote.

However, these seized properties are believed as only a small part of Guzmán's entire fortune, the news outlet noted. The U.S. Justice Department and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration estimated that the cartel runs narcotics worth billions of dollars to the United States annually.

One of the concerns in Mexico is a 2009 law intended to grant officials more extensive authority over the seizure of drug cartel members' assets, USA Today added. The law only allows attorney generals to confiscate the properties instead of assigning it to local prosecutors, making attorney generals overburdened of the duties and cases to slip through the cracks.

The law also obliges property owners to be sentenced before authorities can take away their assets, the news outlet further reported. This delays confiscations that can take up to months or even years, resulting for plenty of cases to fall short. A Mexican Senate report deemed the overall result of this law against organized crime as unsuccessful.

"Attacking criminal groups financially by pursuing the properties and firms that provide them with financial and logistical support is an essential part of the fight against organized crime," said Antonio Mazzitelli, Latin American representative of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, as quoted by USA Today. "In Mexico, they put a criminal in jail, and nothing happens."

Since 2007, the U.S. Treasury Department has prohibited 95 Mexican firms and hundreds of individuals linked to Guzmán's drug trade from conducting operations in the U.S., USA Today noted. However, all these companies are still running in Mexico.

According to UPI, all assets of two of Guzmán's suspected operatives, Guadalupe Fernández Valencia and Jorge Mario Valenzuela Verdugo, were frozen after they were placed on the Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons List. The two are accused of helping move drugs and money for the Sinaloa Cartel and distributing narcotics in the Mexican cities of Culiacán and Guadalajara.