A committee of American elected officials on Tuesday accused Chinese authorities of indirectly participating in the production of fentanyl, a powerful opiate responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of people each year in the United States.
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According to a report published by the Special Committee in charge of policy of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), created by elected officials in the House of Representatives, the Chinese government subsidizes the activity of laboratories producing the precursors of fentanyl, these ingredients necessary for the manufacture of the molecule, since the latter exclusively export their production.
“These subsidies take the form of VAT reductions,” said an assistant to an elected member of the committee during a telephone press briefing.
“We observed that subsidized companies sold on average ten times more drugs,” he added.
According to the report, most of the companies involved are legally registered and have numerous customers in the United States and Europe for other products. The production and export of fentanyl precursors is therefore not necessarily their main activity.
In order to reduce their activity, the committee proposes the establishment of a specific authority, with a sanction capacity which could target these laboratories, but also the digital platforms as well as the banks financing them, in order to no longer make production profitable. of precursors.
But such an approach can only bear fruit with reinforced cooperation at the global level, the report continues, in order to increase its effectiveness.
Fentanyl, a powerful synthetic opiate used in the medical field but whose use can be misused as a drug, is responsible for more than 70,000 overdose deaths each year in the United States, according to American authorities, mainly among 18-year-olds. 49 years.
The subject was raised during the visit of the US Treasury Secretary, Janet Yellen, during her visit to China earlier this month, which included the start of discussions to improve cooperation against money laundering.
Cooperation whose objective is in particular to cut off funding for drug traffickers and thus reduce the flow of opiates to the United States.
If fentanyl until now mainly came from China, the market is now largely dominated by Mexican drug cartels.
Chinese laboratories are suspected of supplying drug traffickers, particularly Mexican ones, with substances used to manufacture fentanyl.
The United States accuses China of not doing enough to combat the illegal production and export of these fentanyl components.
