by Bochen Han in SCMP, June 24, 2023
The US Justice Department filed criminal charges on Friday against Chinese chemical manufacturing companies and individuals for illegally trafficking chemicals used to make fentanyl – a highly addictive painkiller fuelling the opioid crisis in the United States.

The indictments, brought in the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York, are the first time the US has sought to prosecute China-based chemical manufacturing companies and nationals for trafficking the precursor chemicals used to make the drug into the US.

“We are targeting every step of the movement, manufacturing and sale of fentanyl – from start to finish,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said on Friday.

“That includes not only going after the leaders of [Mexican] cartels, their drug and gun traffickers, their money launderers, security forces, and clandestine lab operators. It also includes stopping the Chinese chemical companies that are supplying the cartels with the building blocks they need to manufacture deadly fentanyl.”

According to the US government, fentanyl is the leading cause of death for Americans ages 18 to 49. Overdoses cause tens of thousands of deaths each year in the US, with deaths related to the drug rising from 5.7 per 100,000 people in 2016 to 21.6 in 2021.

In the Southern District, prosecutors charged the Wuhan-based chemical company Hubei Amarvel Biotech, along with its executives Qingzhou Wang, Yiyi Chen and Fnu Lnu, with fentanyl trafficking; precursor chemical importation for fentanyl and methamphetamine; and money-laundering offences.

Wang and Chen, both Chinese nationals, were expelled from Fiji on June 8 and ordered detained by a federal judge in Hawaii on June 9 until they could be transported to New York.

Yang, also a Chinese national, remains at large.

According to the indictment, Hubei Amarvel Biotech has advertised online sending precursor chemicals to the United States and Mexico – including a guarantee of “100% stealth shipping” abroad – and posted documentation of shipments to Culiacan, Mexico, the home city of the Sinaloa drug cartel.

In April, the US government filed charges against the cartel, which it said was largely responsible for the influx of fentanyl into the United States. At the same time, the US charged some executives of a China-based precursor chemical company for helping ship chemicals to Mexico.

Wang, Chen and Yang allegedly shipped more than 200 kilograms of precursor chemicals used to make fentanyl and its analogues from China to the United States – which US authorities seized.

In the first of two indictments in the Eastern District, prosecutors charged two Anhui-based companies, Anhui Rencheng Technology and Anhui Moker New Material Technology, and four Chinese employees – Shutong Wang, Shifang Ruan, Xinyu Zhao and Yue Gao – with manufacturing fentanyl and conspiracy to manufacture and distribute the drug.

They were also charged with illegally concealing their activities, including through customs fraud and introducing misbranded drugs in the US.

Rencheng and two of its employees were also charged with conspiracy to distribute butonitazene, a controlled substance.

The second indictment charges another Anhui-based company – Hefei GSK Trade – and an employee, Ruiqing Li, with similar charges related to fentanyl and metonitazene, another controlled substance.

China had been considered the main source of fentanyl entering the US until 2019, when Beijing imposed stricter export controls at the request of the US.

China remains the main source for key ingredients, according to US officials, but the final production capacity has largely moved to countries like Mexico, which can then smuggle the finished product into the US.

Congress has held multiple hearings about China’s role in the fentanyl crisis in recent months.

During his recent visit to Beijing, Secretary of State Antony Blinken also raised the issue as a “priority”. Blinken called for the two sides to work together to disrupt the global flow of synthetic drugs and their precursor chemicals into the United States.

Days before Blinken’s visit, the two sides resumed talks on drug control cooperation, after China suspended such dialogue for 10 months after then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan last August.

Also on Friday, Blinken announced that he would launch a global coalition to address synthetic drug threats in July; China has been invited to join.

Friday’s events followed the imposition of multiple sanctions against Chinese entities and individuals allegedly involved in fentanyl trafficking, sanctions that China has protested.

In May, the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control announced sanctions against seven entities and six individuals based in China.

That followed similar sanctions imposed in April against two Chinese companies and four nationals for allegedly supplying precursor chemicals used for fentanyl production to drug cartels in Mexico.

China had warned that “unreasonable” US sanctions could create “obstacles” for cooperation to tackle the fentanyl crisis.
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/3225229/us-files-first-ever-charges-against-chinese-fentanyl-manufacturers