Treasury Secretary Travels to Atlanta to Announce Fentanyl Crackdown

ATLANTA – In her second visit to Atlanta this year, U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen last week announced new sanctions against those who smuggle fentanyl and other synthetic opioids into the United States.

Yellen’s announcement at a news conference in Atlanta coincided with the arrest of eight leaders of the La Nueva Familia Michocana cartel on 13 indictments.

More than 1 million Americans have died of drug overdoses since 2000, while fatal fentanyl overdoses among Georgians increased 200% between 2019 and 2021, Yellen said.

“Far too many families in communities across the United States are losing loved ones to opioids,” she said. “That’s why President Biden has directed the entire U.S. government to use every tool at our disposal to combat the opioid epidemic.”

“Illegal drugs imported into the United States are killing our citizens at unprecedented rates,” added Ryan Buchanan, U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia.

Yellen said the sanctions imposed by the Treasury Department’s Office of Financial Assets Control are intended to deprive cartels of the funds they need to carry out their illegal activities.

“The cartels that sell fentanyl operate in many ways like other businesses,” she said. “They depend on access to banking systems…to pay salaries and finance purchases. »

Yellen said the federal government needs help from the private sector to make sanctions work. To that end, the Treasury Department also issued an advisory Thursday aimed at helping financial institutions detect and report flows of money fueling the fentanyl supply chain.

“One of the most powerful things we can do is deny (the cartels) the fruits of their labor, the very essence of what these cartels need: their money,” said Special Agent in Charge Robert Murphy. charge of the Atlanta office of the United States Drug Enforcement Administration. . “We don’t want them to use this money to become stronger and have a bigger impact in the United States.”

Yellen said La Nueva Familia Michocana not only ships fentanyl, cocaine and methamphetamines into the United States, but also smuggles illegal immigrants across the southern border and engages in arms trafficking.

Yellen said Chinese officials had agreed to cooperate with U.S. efforts to combat fentanyl and that she was reaching out to Claudia Sheinbaum, recently elected president of Mexico, to work with the United States to stem the flow of drugs dangerous across the border.

Dave Williams of Capitol Beat News Service contributed to this report.