U.S. Charges 4 Chinese Firms With Selling Chemicals to Make Fentanyl

Four chemical companies based in China and eight Chinese nationals have been charged with trafficking chemicals used by Mexican drug cartels to manufacture vast quantities of fentanyl later sold in the United States, federal officials said on Friday.

The officials said that two of the Chinese defendants — the principal executive and marketing manager of one of the companies — had been arrested recently overseas and taken to Hawaii for a court appearance, and that they would be brought to Manhattan to face prosecution.

The new indictments unsealed on Friday were part of an overarching strategy by the Drug Enforcement Administration to attack the deadly scourge of fentanyl at every stage of the supply chain, from China to Mexico to the United States.

Attorney General Merrick B. Garland, in a news conference on Friday, said the Chinese firms charged in the case used social media to openly advertise the sale of so-called precursor chemicals used to make fentanyl, and shipped them in deceptive packaging to evade detection by law enforcement. The drug ultimately went to organizations like the Sinaloa cartel, which was formerly run by the Mexican drug lord known as El Chapo.

“They went as far as to guarantee ‘100 percent stealth shipping,’ and they provided proof of their success on their websites, including a screenshot of a shipping confirmation to Culiacán, Mexico, the Sinaloa cartel’s base of operations,” Mr. Garland said.

In April, Mr. Garland announced sweeping indictments in Manhattan, Chicago and Washington charging more than two dozen people in what he described as a global fentanyl manufacturing and distribution operation run by the Sinaloa cartel. He said the operation included suppliers in China that sold the precursor chemicals.

Those defendants included the four sons of El Chapo, whose real name is Joaquín Guzmán Loera and who is serving life in prison in the United States after his 2019 conviction in Brooklyn.

Anne Milgram, the D.E.A. administrator, has said that the Sinaloa cartel and other cartels and their affiliates control the vast majority of the fentanyl global supply chain, from manufacture to distribution, and are buying precursor chemicals in China, which are then taken to Mexico and used to mass produce the drug.

Lisa O. Monaco, the deputy attorney general, said at the news conference Friday, “The fentanyl supply chain all too often begins in China, where the chemical ingredients for fentanyl are produced and exported by the ton.”

The D.E.A. has also pursued drug dealers in communities across the United States who sell fentanyl on the streets. Last month, the agency announced the end of what was known as Operation Last Mile, a yearlong effort to stop dealers that resulted in more than 3,300 arrests and the seizure of nearly 44 million fentanyl pills and more than 6,500 pounds of powder.

Glenn Thrush and Alan Feuer contributed reporting.