News, views and top stories in your inbox. Don't miss our must-read newsletter Sign up Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Invalid Email

After hunting the world’s most powerful drug trafficker for more than 30 years, US law enforcement officers were jubilant when they finally got their hands on Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman.

The US Drug Enforcement Administration and local marines finally recaptured the 61-year-old crime lord, who twice escaped from prison, in his native Mexico in 2016.

But now – while El Chapo is standing trial in New York and allegations surface that he bribed Mexico City’s chief of police – authorities have discovered that another, even more powerful, kingpin was the true mastermind behind the Sinaloa cartel.

It now appears that El Chapo was something of a public face, the poster boy for the world’s most feared drugs cartel.

The real leader of the trafficking operation is El Chapo’s former partner, 70-year-old Ismael Zambada, known as El Mayo.

For, despite El Chapo’s incarceration, analysts have seen an increase in the cartel’s shipments to the States, including the highly addictive, often fatal, drug fentanyl.

(Image: Reuters) (Image: Getty)

The bloodshed has also escalated under El Mayo’s command. Murders in Mexico rose 16% in the first half of this year, to 15,973, up from 13,751 in the same period in 2017.

Authorities have attributed the rise in deaths to battles between the rival Jalisco New Generation drugs cartel and El Mayo’s organisation, for control of trafficking routes from Mexico’s west coast to America.

But while Sinaloa’s activity has escalated under El Mayo’s reign, he remains a ghost.

Whereas El Chapo’s love of the limelight and lavish lifestyle eventually led to his demise, El Mayo, a former poppy field worker, has stayed below the radar.

He tops the DEA’s list of the world’s most wanted criminals, with a £4million bounty on his head, but the multibillionaire has never been in prison, despite more than 40 years of trafficking.

Former chief of operations at the DEA, Jack Riley, who captured El Chapo, says he has no doubt who Sinaloa’s real boss is.

He says: “Mayo is the most powerful drug trafficker. I even think we have underestimated his influence and power in controlling the US drug market.”

Thousands of Mexican marines, police and DEA agents – all supported by drones and high-tech surveillance – have searched for El Mayo for more than 40 decades.

But he is still the most elusive fugitive on the planet. To evade capture, he has had plastic surgery, wears a range of disguises, and never sleeps in the same place twice.

He remains in constant movement, especially in the mountainous region shared by the states of Durango, Sinaloa and Chihuahua, in northwest Mexico. The area is known as the Golden Triangle, thanks to its abundance of poppies and marijuana.

But the biggest weapons in El Mayo’s evasion arsenal are the hundreds of officials he pays off. They, according to El Chapo’s defence team, stretch to the very highest office in Mexico, with El Mayo allegedly paying £4.7million to President Enrique Pena Nieto, who has denied the allegation.

El Chapo’s defence lawyer, Jeffrey Lichtman, told jurors: “He’s [Guzman] blamed for being the leader, while the real leaders are living freely and openly in Mexico.”In truth, he controlled nothing. Mayo Zambada did. Mayo Zambada kept paying the Mexican government, president after president, two in a row – and somehow he remains free. And who is the one that’s constantly being hunted down? It’s Guzman.

(Image: AFP/Getty Images)

“[Government officials] were paid off to leave Zambada alone.”

Former Mexican president Felipe Calderon, who preceded Neito, has always denied taking cartel money.

El Mayo started working with a cartel based in Juarez, on the Mexico-US border, in the 1980s and 1990s.

When Juarez’s leader, Amado Carrillo Fuentes, died in 1997 after botched plastic surgery to change his face, the cartel eventually split into two factions. One gang was based in Tijuana, on the US border, and the other, set up largely by El Mayo and El Chapo, was in Sinaloa, further south.

When the Tijuana cartel began to decline, and the pair took advantage. They set out to expand their trafficking routes to the US and Europe, as they controlled much of the heroin production and shipment in Mexico.

The Sinaloa cartel went on to build a £9billion-a-year international cocaine, heroin and human-trafficking empire. El Mayo’s strength was his ability to quickly adapt to customers’ demands.

(Image: Getty)

And, as the cash poured in, his army of highly educated money men laundered their ill-gotten gains through some of the world’s biggest banks and offshore accounts, while also investing in legitimate companies.

Mike Vigil, former head of international operations at the DEA, explained: “He has a very diversified portfolio. Even though he’s only had maybe an elementary school education, he’s received a Harvard-level education from some of the most prolific, knowledgeable and astute drug lords that Mexico has ever had.”

Now, despite his advancing years, growing frailty, and battle with diabetes, EL Mayo is as sharp as ever. Since El Chapo’s arrest in January 2016, he has successfully diversified the cartel’s business, from cannabis and coke to deadly fentanyl, an opioid-based synthetic drug.

The average revenue from one kilo of fentanyl purchased in China can yield as much as 24 times the income of one kilo of heroin bought in Colombia, according to the DEA. And now, with America in the grip of an opioid crisis, the Sinaloa cartel’s supply shows no sign of slowing.

(Image: Getty)

According to US agencies, El Mayo tends to act more as an entrepreneur than as a drug lord. The Office of Foreign Assets Control of the United States says he has been in charge of many financial operations within the Sinaloa cartel. And he uses his considerable resources to pay for protection from the authorities, and within the mountain communities where he hides out.

Indeed, El Mayo has often become a patron and protector of locals in the area.

Unlike other drug barons, he is not known for targeting civilians. This – and the fact that his businesses offer them employment, security and health care services not covered by local authorities – has allowed him to build an impenetrable protection network.

Francisco Jimenez Reynoso, a researcher at the University of Guadalajara, says: “They buy wills, they buy loyalties and, in many cases, they are willing to give up their lives for a character of this nature, even if they engage in illicit activities.”

(Image: Reuters)

Despite his low-key, almost gentle, persona, El Mayo is not a man to be crossed. Protected by dozens of henchmen, he has stayed at the top despite huge blows to his inner circle.

In recent years, two of his sons and a nephew have been captured.

But his most significant loss was his bother, Jesus Zambada, who was arrested in 2008 and is now helping the US’s case against El Chapo. After seeking a deal with US prosecutors, Jesus – the cartel’s chief accountant for more than 15 years – said his brother and El Chapo were considered Sinaloa’s leaders.

El Mayo also lost his right-hand man, Manuel Torres Felix, in a shootout with the military in 2012. Five years later, El Mayo survived an attack, reportedly by Damaso Lopez Nunez, another Sinaloa leader. A slew of deaths followed the assassination attempt.

The ambush also targeted two of El Chapo’s sons, suggesting an internal power struggle after his capture in Mexico in 2016, and his extradition to the US a year later.

Some analysts had believed El Mayo might be slipping into the shadows, or even retiring, but instead, since El Chapo’s capture, he seems to be relishing his sole command.