Several organised-crime cases in Europe in recent months have come with unusually prominent connections to Mexico’s Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), potentially bringing some much-needed light to how one of Mexico’s largest criminal organisations actually operates on the continent.
On June 10, four alleged CJNG members travelled to Czechia. They had quite the shopping list.
Among them was José Miguel Alvarado Morales, the godson of Audias Flores Silva, alias “El Jardinero”, one of the CJNG’s most senior figures. El Jardinero was arrested in Mexico in April.
According to US federal prosecutors, the men were looking to buy machine guns, RPG-7 launchers, 61-millimetre mortars, ammunition and other military equipment for shipment to Mexico.
The proposed payment was unusual. Prosecutors say the defendants agreed to pay for the weapons with fentanyl and methamphetamine that would be distributed in the United States. The indictment does not say who was supposed to receive or sell those drugs, or exactly how the proceeds would reach the weapons supplier.
But the Czech adventure rolled two business ventures into one. The men allegedly also planned to meet a possible new supplier of precursor chemicals used to manufacture synthetic drugs.
This was only one of several recent cases placing alleged CJNG operators or business partners in Europe.
In March, Bulgarian arms dealer Peter Dimitrov Mirchev was extradited from Spain to the United States over a separate alleged attempt to supply military weapons to the cartel.
That investigation stretches back to at least 2022. US prosecutors say Mirchev and several associates held meetings with people claiming to represent the CJNG and eventually arranged a test shipment of 50 AK-47s from Bulgaria. A Tanzanian end-user certificate was allegedly obtained to disguise the intended recipient.
The ambitions then became much larger. Prosecutors say Mirchev prepared a €53.7 million weapons package that potentially included rocket launchers, anti-personnel mines, anti-aircraft weapons and other military equipment.
Then, on August 5, Spanish police announced a different CJNG case about liquid methamphetamine.
The investigation began after French authorities discovered a container travelling from Mexico to Spain. On board were 12 tonnes of liquid vanilla extract with 2.5 tonnes of methamphetamine dissolved into it.
Liquid Cocaine and Liquid Meth - The New Winning Strategy for Drug Traffickers
Every month, I review news about dozens of drug seizures and arrests. Most follow familiar patterns.
Spanish and French investigators followed the shipment into Spain and uncovered a network of processing and storage sites in Catalonia. Thirteen people were arrested.
More unusually, Spanish authorities explicitly described the organisation behind the operation as a branch of the CJNG. The methamphetamine had been shipped across the Atlantic in liquid form and then had to be extracted and processed after reaching Europe.
Weapons negotiations in Czechia, another alleged arms pipeline running through Bulgaria and Spain, and tonnes of methamphetamine hidden in vanilla extract therefore provide three very different recent European connections to the same Mexican cartel.
