The US launches prosecutions against Chinese companies for trafficking fentanyl ingredients

The US Justice Department filed criminal charges on Friday against four Chinese companies and eight individuals for allegedly trafficking the chemicals used to make the highly addictive painkiller fentanyl in the United States and Mexico. The three separate indictments unsealed in federal court in New York represent the first prosecutions to charge China-based chemical companies and Chinese nationals with illegally selling the chemicals used to make fentanyl, which has been blamed for a deadly overdose crisis.
A spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy condemned the charges, accusing the American government of seeking to shift the blame for its domestic drug problem. Federal prosecutors said the companies marketed the fentanyl precursor chemicals on their websites and social media accounts, advertised that they accepted payment in cryptocurrency and shipped them to drug traffickers including Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel. “When I announced in April that the Justice Department had taken significant enforcement actions against the Sinaloa Cartel, I promised that the Justice Department would never forget the victims of the fentanyl epidemic,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said. Garland said those actions include stopping Chinese chemical companies from “supplying the cartels with the building blocks they need to manufacture deadly fentanyl.”