Authorities in Cuba have arrested a suspected Chinese fentanyl kingpin known as ‘Mr Haha’, who escaped house arrest through a tunnel.
Zhi Dong Zhang, also wanted by the U.S., is accused of supplying the two most powerful rival drug cartels in the world with chemicals.
He is suspected of being a ‘narco-broker’ with business ties to Mexico’s Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation drug cartels, designated as ‘foreign terrorist organisations’ by Washington.
For months, a global manhunt has been ongoing for the trafficker, who also operates under the aliases of ‘Brother Wang’, ‘Mr T’ and ‘Nelson Mandela’, apparently reflecting his childhood role models.
Zhang, believed to have been born in Beijing in 1987, was detained in Mexico in October 2024 and was held in a prison in Mexico City awaiting a hearing for his extradition to the United States, where a warrant has been issued for his arrest on money laundering charges.
He was granted house arrest, from which he escaped in July through a tunnel.
He has been on the run ever since, with authorities assuming he had slipped back into China.
But on Tuesday, it emerged that he was captured in Cuba, where he had arrived with a false passport from Russia.
Zhang’s arrest comes as the Trump administration ramps up its war on drug traffickers in Venezuela, with officials saying they are acting in self-defence by destroying boats in the Caribbean Sea suspected of carrying illegal drugs to the United States.
Security sources told AFP it is not yet clear if the suspect will be deported from Cuba back to Mexico or a formal extradition process needs to be undertaken.
The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has been seeking Zhang’s arrest for several years, accusing him of running an extensive network that stretched across the globe from operational bases in California and Georgia to Central and South America, Europe and Asia.
As well as supplying the two Mexican criminal groups, who are deadly rivals, with the chemicals necessary to make fentanyl, Zhang is suspected of operating a money laundering network in the U.S., concealing huge criminal profits.
Zhang is considered ‘a major international money laundering operator,’ Mexican Security Secretary Omar Garcia Harfuch said last year.
The trafficker was responsible for ‘establishing connections with other cartels for the transfer of fentanyl from China to Central America, South America, Europe, and the United States,’ he added.
