Four companies and eight individuals charged with shipping enough precursor chemicals into US to kill ‘25m Americans’
The US justice department has filed criminal charges against four Chinese chemical manufacturing companies and eight individuals over allegations they illegally trafficked the chemicals used to make fentanyl, a highly addictive painkiller that has fueled the opioid crisis in the United States.
It is the first time the United States has charged Chinese companies for trafficking fentanyl precursor chemicals inside the United States, rather than shipping them to Mexico, the origin of most of the fentanyl found in the country.
“These companies and their employees knowingly conspired to manufacture deadly fentanyl for distribution in the United States,” the attorney general, Merrick Garland, announced on Friday.
“Just one of these China-based chemical companies shipped more than 200 kilograms of fentanyl-related precursor chemicals to the US for the purpose of making 50 kilograms of fentanyl, a quantity that could contain enough deadly doses of fentanyl to kill 25 million Americans,” said Garland.
