Tuesday, March 19, 2024
HomeNewsEXCLUSIVE: Drug Traffickers Own Jenni Rivera Death Plane

EXCLUSIVE: Drug Traffickers Own Jenni Rivera Death Plane

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.

Daniel Hopsicker
Daniel Hopsickerhttp://www.madcowprod.com
Daniel Hopsicker is an investigative journalist and the author of two books on transnational crime, Welcome to Terrorland and Barry & the Boys.
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21 COMMENTS

  1. As the owner of a charter company (Exquisite Air Charter), I looked into the charter operator who was operating the aircraft that went down and found similar information. Aviation is a very tight community and with a company in existence who has 14 aircraft; yet the address listed is to a company who registers corporations, I knew something was funny! Who was maintaining the fleet? Where was the fleet being maintained? Hangar space? Why are these persons not seeking charter revenue from such a large fleet of aircraft? Furthermore, why are they not seeking revenue in an under-developed charter market (Las Vegas) who doesn’t have an abundance of FAA Part 135 registered aircraft available for charter? Immediately I knew something was seriously not right. In the charter industry we maintain extremely valuable relationships with one another because brokers rely on operators for lift and operators rely on other operators for supplemental lift. It certainly seemed strange to not be familiar with a company who maintains a substantial fleet of aircraft.

  2. Hi Rena, You are, of course, right. But criminals will be criminals. What I’M on about is: Where are the cops? To say the FAA is the most corrupt agency of the entire Federal Government may be unfair. After all, we’ve still got the SEC. But its a close second. The FAA has been thoroughly compromised by the boys and girls at another three-letter Federal Agency, who are committed to their mission to maximize revenue from the drug trade. They used to excuse their poor behavior by saying they were fighting communism (which was a good racket, while it lasted.) No matter the human misery caused by 2 million poor slobs in prison for peddling little baggies of what these guys bring in by the TON. Nobody cares about them. Except…they’ve all got MOMS. And I know how MY mom would feel if I was (god forbid) sent to prison. When you come up against pure evil, it sort of takes your breath away.

  3. all goverment, s are on the same game $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$.

  4. It’s all so sad and disappointing! As a mother of grown boys… I’d be sad & extremely let down! I expect better from my boys (as I’m sure your mother expects from you)! Let’s not forget that these types of situations also give those of us honest aviation PROFESSIONALS a bad rap in an already economically challenged field 🙁

  5. True aviation professionals are great people, hard-working, fun, and upset about things they see all too frequently… Especially here in Florida, or anywhere else within flying radius of Honduras or the Yucatan.Pretty frustrating stuff, especially since whistleblowers don’t get invited to the big parties on Oscar night. But they’re my biggest sources, and I love ’em, cause by myself I can’t tell the difference between an aerilon and a carillon.

  6. Ironically, I have more than a few great charter customers in Florida and I can honestly say that it is a challenged private jet charter market (to say the least). Customers seem aware of the challenged market and corruption there (as do aviation professionals). Not being in Florida myself, I am sure there are details that I am not privy to but I do know that it is a compromised market (and perhaps why I end up with such faithful customers from that region). It is just so sad that, as you point out, the governing bodies involved are focusing their attention in the wrong arenas all too often. The financial rewards of some greedy people have been at the cost of a life far too many times!

  7. If you want to see the FAA in action, look at how it handled the watershed events following the “accident” that killed (murdered, actually) Minnesota Senator Paul Wellstone and his wife.

    Of course…we don’t need an inconvenient (but routine) hearing over a crash involving U.S. Senator who had warned off his course of political activity by Cheney (but to no avail); a sudden diving crash involving a plane with both a pilot and a copilot (each of whom had a huge amount of experience).

    Of course…the FBI did not arrive on the scene at a time when they would have had to depart for said scene, in their vans from Duluth, before the crash actually occurred.

    Of course…the flying conditions were treacherous that day! Wolf Blizter said so (from 1500 miles away). So you can ignore how the weather was described by people on the scene and in the air at the time of the “accident.”

    The FAA is more pliable than Play Dough.

    Whether you are a “made man” drug peddler or a deep cover regime assassin, they will stand by you and do their part to reinvent reality prn (as needed).

    And when the head of the FAA reports what really happened at least one time in its history [Cheney in the Pentagon bunker on 9/11 and in inbound “hijacked” 757] he is struck from the official record and becomes a mere footnote in the whitewashing of the now-debunked regime-concocted (conspiracy) theory to account for the collateral damage slaughter of over 3,000 people.

    Thanks, Dan, for all you do for us!

  8. Thank you Hank. “More pliable than Play-Dough” is pretty good, and I’ll (shamelessly) use it sometime. Though it occurs to me to ask some young mother if anyone remembers what Play-Dough is anymore! It’s a shame that aircraft are such a popular way for ‘inconvenient’ people to accident themselves, and that the death of Paul Wellstone will always be remembered as just ‘one of those things.’

  9. Thanks Hank, as a Minnesotan, I will always be appalled at the cover-up of the Wellstone crash. It is funny how all of these thing, drug trafficking, 9-11, Wellstone Assassination, all converge with the aviation industry and the FAA/NSTB. So funny I forgot to laugh.

  10. Take a look at the all- star team on the staff of Veritas Worldwide Solutions,/Veritas Worldwide Security the San Diego security/intelligence firm that booked an Esquino flight to rescue Gaddafi’s son, apparently on behalf of Canada’s largest civil engineering and construction firm, SNC-Lavalin.
    Greg L Gillispie, USMC Force Recon Team Leader(27 yrs) & Naval Special Warfare Project Mgr.
    Michael Boffo, USMC, DynCorp, Chief of Personal Protective Services, Iraq.
    David Bejarano, USMC, US Marshal / chair of federal narcotics enforcement initiative, San Diego Police Chief, Chula Vista Police Chief (current).
    Michael Najera, ex–port commissioner AND last but not least…

    Antonio Martínez Luna.
    Port Director in Tijuana Baja California and Reynosa Tamaulipas.
    Chief of Customs of Tijuana Baja California Airport….
    Attorney General for the State of Baja California,” where he “was responsible for coordinating the fight against organized crime in Baja California.”.

    >>”Officials in Mexico and the U.S. have suspected government ties to the Sinaloa cartel since a videotaped confession of a cartel gunman surfaced two years ago, alleging that former state Att. Gen. Antonio Martinez Luna was taking payoffs. Martinez Luna has vehemently denied the accusation.”<< LA Times September 16, 2009.

    http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-mexicali16-2009sep16,0,2216889.story

  11. “The Latin American drug cartels have stretched their tentacles much deeper into our lives than most people believe. It’s possible they are calling the shots at all levels of government.”
    – William Colby, former CIA Director, 1995.

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