BOGOTA: Colombian authorities Tuesday extradited a woman accused of links to Mexico’s infamous Sinaloa drug cartel, police announced.
Dolly Cifuentes Villa, 48, was handed over to US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) at a military airport in Bogota, Colombian police announced in a statement.
Accused of drug trafficking and money laundering in the United States, she will be transferred immediately to a court in the southeastern state of Florida, police said.
The suspect was arrested in August 2011 in a police crackdown in the northeastern Colombian city of Envigado.
Cifuentes Villa is the sister of Francisco Cifuentes Villa, who was assassinated in 2007 after working as the personal pilot of legendary drug lord Pablo Escobar, who headed a Colombian drug cartel and was killed by the Latin American nation’s army in December 1993.
After her brother’s death, Dolly Cifuentes Villa resumed business with her other brothers, Alexander and Jorge Milton, partnering with the leader of the Sinaloa cartel Sinaloa Joaquin “El Chapo” (Shorty) Guzman.
Sought by Interpol and the FBI since his escape from prison in 2001, Guzman is considered the most powerful drug trafficker in Mexico, and according to Forbes Magazine, has a fortune ranging in the billions of dollars.
Police say the Cifuentes Villa brothers have managed to bring nearly 60,000 pounds (30 tons) of cocaine to the US in the past three years.