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The owner of the Learjet whose
crash in Mexico's Sierra Madre Mountains killed popular singer Jenni Rivera is
from a prominent family in Monterrey which supplied drug planes during the
1990’s to drug baron Amador Carrillo, known as “The Lord of the Skies” for
flying tons of cocaine, often on Boeing 727’s, into the U.S.
50-year old
Christian Eduardo Esquino-Nunez is the owner—at least, on paper—of Starwood
Management LLC, the Las Vegas aviation charter company which is the registered
owner of the crashed Lear jet.
It is, at best,
a legal fiction.
Virtually
nothing about him should be taken at face value. And with good reason: he
lives in a web of international intrigue.
One example: Eduardo
Esquino-Nunez was part of a conspiracy last year to smuggle Moammar Khadafy’s
son, Saadi Gaddafi, into Mexico.
He was
contacted, he said, by a representative of a Canadian developer who asked for a
Mexican-registered aircraft charter to North Africa.
Even more
telling: he was one of four people arrested and imprisoned while awaiting
trial. Yet, alone among the four, he was recently and mysteriously
released. And, according to an interesting English language blog in Mexico
City, he is scheduled to testify this Friday in Mexico City about his role in
the plot.
Do such things
'just happen' in Mexico? Did he just get lucky? Or is Eduardo Esquino-Nunez,
perhaps, really well-connected?
"No
matter how cynical you get, it's hard to keep up"
(If you answered (c), you're probably
also aware of the truth of Lily Tomlin's statement.
Eduardo
Esquino-Nunez's family ties with major drug traffickers were first exposed
when, during his campaign for the Mexican Presidency in 1994, (and before his
assassination) PRI candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio used a plane (a Sabreliner SC
80) that had been owned by (the already dead) Amada Carrillo Fuentes.
Still, it was
reported by a Mexico City reporter named Juan Ruiz Healy, who exposed the
Esquino-Nunez brothers sordid ties in Monterey with various and sundry Mexican
gangsters and politicians.
Colosio was
provided the drug baron’s plane by a “company” called Air Siesta, Inc., located
at Meacham Airport in Fort Worth, Texas, owned by Ed Nunez’s brother, Salvador
Esquino Nunez (also deceased.)
It was a minor
scandal, like the one in the U.S. a decade ago after we discovered Texas
Governor George W Bush was flying around on–of all things!--one of Barry Seal’s
(also deceased) favorite airplanes, when some people drew a sharp breath, if
only for a moment.
And it revealed
the interesting fact that the Esquino-Nunez brothers were already well-known
in, um, certain quarters.
Nooks & crannies, warp and hum
It begins on a
Saturday night in Monterrey, the northern industrial capital of Mexico. After
performing a concert before more than 15,000 fans, singer Jenni Rivera and her
small entourage, including her lawyer and manager, prepare for take-off for
Toluca, a general aviation airport just outside Mexico City. (More on that
later.)
She is being
flown aboard an aging Lear Jet owned by Starwood Management. But why was a
woman on the cusp of a huge show-biz cross-over success flying in a 45-year old
plane?
The true story
of the death of Jenni Rivera, which has not yet been revealed, will be like one
of those rumors about a ‘funny’ uncle that get told in a self-deprecating tone,
but passed along anyway, just in case… and later turn out to be true.
It’s the story
of the infiltration of the gargantuan international drug trade into every nook
and cranny in the warp and fabric of modern life, which is the elephant in the
living room that no one wants to talk about.
Something's burning
Examples are
everywhere. Start with the crash site.
Victoriano
Escobedo, a shepherd in the mountains of Nuevo Leon, sees it first, in the
distance, between two mountains.
Something is
burning.
To get there—15
miles from Galeana—you have to walk five miles through the mountains, in this
rough part of the Sierra Madre Oriental, then two more across a plateau.
The authorities
arrive in heavy-duty trucks. From Monterrey, but not from the nearest town,
Galeana. All 35 local police officers in Galeana were recently taken into
custody, and they have not yet been replaced.
There was no
notice or explanation. None was needed. The empty police station spoke
volumes.
Local residents
serve as guides to the arriving authorities. There is no hurry. There are only
small pieces left, of the plane, and of human remains, they tell the Federales,
strewn across a stony landscape.
The Libyan Connection
Jenni Rivera,
43, known as "La Diva de la Banda," was born in Long Beach,
California to a family of Mexican immigrants.
She received
numerous awards, sold over 15 million albums, was nominated for several
Grammy’s, and after several successful reality shows was being groomed for her
own show on ABC.
Not
surprisingly for someone in show business, she’d had her own brush with the
law. Customs Agents at the Mexico City Airport found her carrying $50,000 in
undeclared cash into the country.
But she got
“lucky,” and was let off with a warning.
Eduardo
Esquino-Nunez recently served two years in the federal penitentiary at Lompoc
California. Upon his release was deported from the U.S. Then, somehow, Ed
Nunez got 'lucky' too.
Less than a
year later, his wholly-owned Starwood Management “owned” a fleet of more than a
dozen aircraft, including a half-dozen luxury Gulfstream’s, three or four
Hawker Siddeley 600’s, a twin-engine mid-sized corporate jet, several Dassault
Falcons, and some twin-engine Cessna’s and Beechcraft King Airs.
Did
Esquino-Nunez strike it rich making license plates while in prison?
Even if he did,
he owes millions in back taxes and fines to the U.S. Government. His Starwood
Management filed for bankruptcy earlier this year. Norma Gonzalez, the only
listed officer, is his sister-in-law.
So the true
owner of the Lear 25 (N345MC) that plowed into a mountain at 600 miles per hour
killing a beloved cross-over Mexican-American singer is—pretty much—anyone’s
guess.
And, pretty
much, that is just how the U.S. Government’s Federal Aviation Administration
(FAA) likes it.
The Toluca Connection
Starwood’s air
charters are currently being run out of Toluca, whose airport in recent years
has been at the center of numerous major drug trafficking scandals, many of
which have been extensively covered here.
In June, the
DEA subpoenaed Norma Gonzalez of Starwood Management LLC, seeking documents
related to a San Diego security firm as part of a controlled substances
investigation.
In a
transparent ruse similar to one used by wily old Uber-Mob boss Meyer Lansky 40
years ago, who listed his hotels—including famous resorts, like the
Fontainebleau in Miami Beach—in the names of strippers and prostitutes who
worked in his clubs, Norma Gonzalez, Eduardo Nunez's sister-in-law, is listed
as the sole officer of Starwood Management. Her signature is on all FAA
registration documents.
Here's a
question: Does the FAA know about this? Here's a better one: How could they
not?
At the San
Diego phone number listed on registration documents for some of Starwood
Management's fleet of planes, there is a voicemail message, left by a male
voice, saying, “Hi, please leave me a message.”
It is as terse
and uninformative as the information Starwood Management LLC provides to the
FAA.
The American Connection
Being fingered
for responsibility in the death of a beloved singer…Being charged with
conspiring to help the son of a ruthless dictator avoid facing the music in his
own country…
Christian
Eduardo Esquino-Nunez's current imbroglio's mark him as a member in good
standing in a ring of well-connected financial fraudsters and
soldiers-of-fortune-turned-private-security-contractors, many of whom have been
accused—and convicted—for a variety of high profile crimes, including drug trafficking,
securities fraud, and money laundering.
Take Jasper
Knabb. Until his conviction earlier this year for a $30 million stock
swindle, Knabb was the CEO of publicly-traded Pegasus Wireless Corp.
Esquino-Nunez
has extensive business connections with Knabb, including using one of his own
shell companies to finance Knabb’s Gulfstream II luxury jet.
Jasper Knabb is
part of Ed Nunez's American connection.
So, did he own
Starwood's 14 planes? Probably not. But we're getting warmer. He may have
fronted the money for whoever did.
When Knabb was
sentenced in June, something extraordinary happened, which tells us something
about Jasper Knabb, Eduardo Esquino-Nunez, and the whole issue of
state-sponsored aviation crime (otherwise known as "drug
trafficking.")
At Knabb's
sentencing, prosecutors were seeking a sentence of seven years and three
months, while defense lawyers argued for three years and four months.
But U.S.
District Judge Jeffrey S. White smelled a rat, and sentenced Knabb to 21 years in
federal prison—nearly three times as long as the
term sought by government prosecutors.
“I give very
little credit to what the government has done,” said Judge White in an
extraordinary summation. “I don’t think they have adequately, accurately, or aggressively
pursued the money this man (Knabb) stole.”
From the bench,
White told Knabb he had caused “unspeakable … misery” to investors who’d lost
their life savings. “His instinct has always been to lie and cheat,” the
judge said.
And he ordered
Knabb jailed immediately after the hearing.
What makes this an American scandal
Esquino-Nuñez
has had numerous run-ins with the law.
A decade ago he
was indicted in Florida for providing drug planes to traffickers busted while
smuggling half a ton of cocaine into South Florida from Colombia.He later spent
two years in Lompoc Federal Penitentiary for aircraft fraud. Then, as
previously stated, at the end of his sentence he was deported from the U.S.
More recently
he was accused by the DEA of providing planes to facilitate operations for a
remnant of the Tijuana Cartel. The allegation remains unproven.
What Ed Nunez's
record has to do with Jenni Rivera's fatal crash on one of his planes is
simple. For such people—who sneer at weak enforcement at the SEC, the FAA, and
the DEA—a fast buck beats properly maintaining airplanes, which is why, when a
drug plane gets busted, more often than not it's because–owing
to poor maintenence–the plane experienced mechanical
difficulties.
Drug pilot
Michael Brassington, currently in prison, provides the perfect example.
Christian
Eduardo Esquino-Nunez, convicted of numerous felonies and then deported,
couldn’t even vote in most states. He probably couldn't even get a drivers
license. Yet he is listed as the owner of record of more than a dozen
American-registered airplanes.
So the biggest
crime in this story isn’t something Christian Eduardo Esquino-Nunez did. The
biggest crime is U.S. government malfeasance.
Because of the
laissez-faire attitude of the FAA—which knows less about who owns luxury $40
million luxury jets than the California Department of Motor Vehicles does about
the owner of a 10-year old used car—Jenni Rivera, a popular Mexican American
“cross-over” singer as well as the mother of five children, is dead.
But Jenni Rivera's
tragedy has, at least, some meaning. Because of it, we know that there are more
than a dozen American-registered aircraft out there whose true owner is someone
the FAA doesn't want us to know about.
That should be
a national scandal. But its not, which speaks volumes about the infiltration of
the drug trade into political life in–not Mexico–but the United States of
America.
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