Sinaloa cartel is the beneficiary of 'Fast and Furious' operation

The Sinaloa cartel was the Mexican criminal organization that benefited the most from the “Fast and Furious” sting operation, which aimed to track firearms smuggled into Mexico from the United States.

Between 2009 and 2011, the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) smuggled more than 2,500 firearms into Mexico and tracked their movement through the country. The operation, known as "Fast and Furious," aimed to identify those responsible for selling weapons to organized crime in Mexico.

These weapons, however, were discovered by the drug traffickers who managed to obtain them. Eventually, the ATF lost their trail.

After the U.S. Department of Justice carried out an investigation into the matter, they found that ATF’s smuggled weapons “were used in various blood crimes in the country, from 2009 until recently," according to the Mexican Attorney General's Office (FGR).

An internal investigation determined that the weapons delivered as part of "Fast and Furious" were not only smuggled into the country, "but have also been used in various criminal acts, which have already been investigated and prosecuted in Mexico."

The Sinaloa Cartel was "the criminal organization that received the weapons,” according to the Special Prosecutor's Office for Organized Crime. While it had been known that the weapons in question were in the hands of organized crime, the cartels involved remained unknown.

In December 2010, two assault rifles sent by the ATF were used in a shootout near the Arizona-Sonora border in which a U.S. Border Patrol agent was killed. In February 2011, a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent was killed in San Luis Potosí with another weapon from the "Fast and Furious" scheme.

The two incidents were key to revealing this operation. After its discovery, the Mexican government filed a complaint with Washington to uncover the intentions and execution of the operation. The president at the time, Felipe Calderon, claimed his administration did not know about the weapons.

"If, as the described evidence indicates, the Mexican government knew and authorized the operation, we would be facing serious violations of the Mexican Constitution and the laws that emanate from it by those who occupied the highest positions in our country, since they would have lied to the Congress of the Union and to society," said Marcelo Ebrard, head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (SRE) in March 2020.

The discovery of "Fast and Furious" also sparked a feud between the U.S. Congress and President Barack Obama, who used his executive privilege to prevent the Attorney General from turning over key documents of the operation to the House of Representatives.

In 2016, the Department of Justice's Office of Inspector General released a final report on the investigation, claiming that "Fast and Furious" was irresponsibly overseen.