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But it wasn’t long before Tello was on very thin ice.

Mishandling

The paranoid El Chapo became suspicious that Tello was mishandling Canadian funds, and plans were soon afoot to get rid of the Canadian as well as one of El Chapo’s many secretaries, Andrea Velez Fernandez.

“Well, Steven (Stephen) Tello, I mean there had been many complaints that I had gotten from Joaquin and also from Andrea herself, that he was stealing in Canada,” Alex said, according to the transcript. “He was stealing the product or the profit of the drug sale.”

Photo by United States Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York

Guzman had been told, it seems, that the Canadian was on the take by other “workers” in Canada.

His solution? Kill Tello.

In around the same time, January 2013, El Chapo asked Velez Fernandez, who also ran a modelling agency, to bribe a military general whom she knew — $10 million to go easy on El Chapo. The deal was that El Chapo would give her one million if she did so, but Alex said that when the secretary returned with bad news — the general didn’t want the deal — El Chapo didn’t believe her.

His solution? Kill her too.

He was stealing the product or the profit of the drug sale

So that he could murder him, Alex then tried to convince Tello to come to Mexico, but the Canadian turned down that particular hospitality package.

“So what we (Alex and El Chapo) did was to ask my wife Valentina for the favour,” he said, the “favour” being to find someone to kill Tello. Valentina was summoned “to see if she could get us a person in Canada who could kill Steven. And Joaquin (El Chapo) said and they can just kill the secretary right away as well because she is a liar.”