Extradition Fight Nearing End for Chinese-Mexican Alleged Drug Conspirator Stephen Dockery - MainJustice.com
go to original January 9, 2014

In this Thursday, May 17, 2007 file photo, Chinese-Mexican businessman Zhenli Ye Gon is interviewed in his lawyer's office in Queens, N.Y. Gon. (AP/Richard Drew)

A  pharmaceutical manufacturer with past ties to Mexico’s political elite is nearing an unusual extradition to Mexico after being held for years in the United States on a drug trafficking conspiracy charge that was dismissed with prejudice.

Chinese-Mexican Zhenli Ye Gon has been in U.S. custody since July 2007, when he was arrested in Wheaton, Md., and charged with a single drug trafficking conspiring count. He has been fighting extradition since 2009, when a judge dismissed the charge after the government’s case began to fall apart.

“Indeed, as both sides appear to acknowledge, this appears to be the first case ever, in U.S. history, in which an extradition has been sought after the dismissal of related U.S. criminal charges with prejudice,” wrote Ye Gon’s attorneys John C. Lowe  and Gregory S. Smith and in a recent court filing.

The case was dismissed with prejudice – meaning it can’t be brought again – in 2009 after a witness refused to testify, and heavy criticism by U.S. District Judge  Emmet Sullivan in Washington, D.C., of prosecutors’ conduct and failure to connect Ye Gon to U.S. crimes.

Ye Gon was arrested after Mexican authorities found more than $200 million in cash in his  mansion in Mexico, alongside weapons and jewels. The dual Chinese-Mexican citizen was accused of distributing chemicals to drug cartels in Mexico knowing they would be used to produce the illegal stimulant methamphetamine for sale on U.S. streets.

Read the rest at MainJustice.com

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