Treasury sanctions Cartel del Noreste horse racing network

The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control on Tuesday designated four people and 11 companies tied to Cartel del Noreste, the former Los Zetas organization already listed by the United States as a foreign terrorist organization, in what the department called its fourth and largest action against the cartel’s networks under the current administration. The centerpiece is Club La Molienda, a racetrack with a restaurant and bar outside Nuevo Laredo that Treasury says the cartel ultimately controls, alongside construction, concrete, real estate, gas distribution and trucking firms linked to Mexico-based businessman Gamaliel Garza Garcia, his son Gamaliel Garza Elias, Nuevo Laredo plaza boss Pablo Cesar Guajardo Alvarez and trucking dispatcher Francisco Javier Inzunza Partida, whose employer Tamex is alleged to have originated at least two cocaine shipments into the United States. The designations, issued under Executive Orders 14059 and 13224 and coordinated with Mexico’s financial intelligence unit, block any US property of the named parties, bar US persons from dealing with them, and expose foreign banks that transact with them to secondary sanctions risk.