Story By: Maja Mishevksa, Sub Editor: Marija Stojkoska, Agency: Newsflash
The Mexican authorities are struggling to sell the houses seized from drug lord El Chapo – which he used to evade the cops – despite lowering their asking prices.
Four houses formerly owned by Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman, the leader of the Sinaloa Cartel, were put up for sale at an auction for a second time last weekend by the Service of Administration and Sale of Property of Goods (Servicio de Administracion y Enajenacion de Bienes-SAE) in Mexico.
All of the houses are located in the city of Culiacan, in the western Mexican state of Sinaloa and were reportedly used by El Chapo to hide from the police during operations to find and arrest him.
The most expensive house in the auction is located on Cerro de las Siete Gorras Street, and the starting price is 8,350,000 MXN (334,887 GBP). In November, the same house had a starting price of more than 11 million MXN (441,168 GBP).
Another house is located on Constituyente Emiliano Garcia Street, with a price of 1,824,000 MXN (73,112 GBP), while in November it was listed at 2,411,000 MXN (96,642 GBP).
A third house is located on Constituyente Enrique Colunga Street at 1,054,000 MXN (42,248 GBP) but in November, the price was 1,411,000 MXN (56,558 GBP).
The final is on Puerto de Veracruz Street and has a listed price of 749,250 MXN (30,030 GBP). The property was bought in the November auction but the buyer then decided to retract his offer and had to pay compensation after he found out that the house had belonged to the drug lord.
The entire auction raised only 7.3 million MXN (292,590 GBP) of the 250 million (10,020,231 GBP) expected, with no properties being sold.
Only 42 of the 325 lots were sold, including two aircraft. The first is a Cessna aircraft with the emblem of the state police of Yucatan that was sold for 1.2 million MXN (48,097 GBP), and the second one is another Cessna C172 model 182 which is out of service and sold for 90,000 MXN (3,607 GBP).
Local media report 39 lots of jewellery were sold.
The money raised from these auctions, which sees property and items seized from criminal organisations and corrupt politicians being sold, goes to social causes.
El Chapo is currently serving a life sentence at the maximum-security ADX Florence prison in Colorado.
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