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Caribbean-Latin America

Fugitive Chinese narco kingpin dubbed 'Mr HaHa' who helped feared cartels flood US and Europe with fentanyl captured in Cuba

2025-10-25

See his federal indictment in New York here.

[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] Tuesday it emerged that he was captured in Cuba where he had arrived with a false passport from Russia.

Cuban police have arrested a suspected Chinese fentanyl kingpin known as 'Mr Haha' who escaped house arrest through a tunnel and is accused of suppling the two most powerful rival drug cartels in the world with chemicals.

Zhi Dong Zhang, also wanted by the U.S., is suspected of being a 'narco-broker' with business ties to Mexico’s Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation drug cartels, designated as 'foreign terrorist organisations' by Washington.

For months, a global manhunt has been ongoing for the trafficker, who also operates under the aliases of 'Brother Wang', 'Mr T' and 'Nelson Mandela', apparently reflecting his childhood role models.

Zhang, believed to have been born in Beijing in 1987, was detained in Mexico in October 2024 and was held in a prison in Mexico City awaiting a hearing for his extradition to the United States, where a warrant has been issued for his arrest on money laundering charges.

He was granted house arrest, from which he escaped in July through a tunnel.

He has been on the run ever since, with authorities assuming he had slipped back into China.

But on Tuesday it emerged that he was captured in Cuba where he had arrived with a false passport from Russia.

Zhang's arrest comes as the Trump administration ramps up its war on drug traffickers in Venezuela, with officials saying they are acting in self-defence by destroying boats in the Caribbean Sea suspected of carrying illegal drugs to the United States.

Security sources told AFP it is not yet clear if the suspect will be deported from Cuba back to Mexico or a formal extradition process needs to be undertaken.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has been seeking Zhang’s arrest for several years, accusing him of running an extensive network that stretched across the globe from operational bases in California and Georgia to Central and South America, Europe and Asia.

As well as supplying the two Mexican criminal groups - who are deadly rivals - with the chemicals necessary to make fentanyl, Zhang is suspected of operating a money laundering network in the U.S., concealing huge criminal profits.

Zhang is considered 'a major international money laundering operator,' Mexican Security Secretary Omar Garcia Harfuch said last year.

The trafficker was responsible for 'establishing connections with other cartels for the transfer of fentanyl from China to Central America, South America, Europe, and the United States,' he added.

Washington under President Donald Trump has been applying pressure on Mexico and China to curb drug trafficking, particularly of fentanyl, the powerful painkiller behind an overdose epidemic in the United States.

Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that is 50 times more powerful than heroin and much easier and cheaper to produce.

It has largely replaced heroin and prescription opioids such as oxycodone as a cause of overdoses in the United States.

Earlier this year, Trump positioned China's role in the fentanyl crisis gripping the U.S. as a major justification for a new round of punitive tariffs targetting Beijing.

Zhang's global operation is understood by investigators to be linked to 150 shell companies and 170 bank accounts.

He has transferred millions of dollars through several big U.S. banks, usually in amounts under $100,000 to avoid detection.

In encrypted messages on platforms like DingTalk, WeChat, and Signa, intercepted by the government, Zhang allegedly used the codename 'coffee' for fentanyl and 'food' for cocaine.

Between 2020 and 2021, authorities estimate that Zhang’s network trafficked over 600 kilograms of methamphetamine, 1,000 kilograms of cocaine, and 1,800 kilograms of fentanyl.

He generated an estimated $150 million annually in profits, according to Mexican media.

Last October, the Chinese kingpin, who is approximately 5ft 7inch tall, was detained in the elite Mexico City neighborhood of Lomas de Santa Fe by federal forces acting on an extradition request from a court in Atlanta, Georgia.

Accused of drug trafficking and money laundering, he was initially held in a maximum-security prison until a Mexican judge approved that he be moved to guarded house arrest.

On July 11, Zhang reportedly slipped through a tunnel connecting his home in the Lomas de Padierna region to a neighboring property, evading the detection of the Mexican national guard stationed outside his residence.

Claudia Sheinbaum, the Mexican president, confirmed he had been 'about to be extradited to the United States' when he escaped and denounced the judge who had granted him house arrest.

Sheinbaum's government has ramped up drug seizures under tariff pressure from Trump, who has threatened further punitive measures unless the problem is solved.

Although Mexico has been the main source of fentanyl sold in the United States, Washington has increasingly focused its attention on China-based suppliers of precursor ingredients.

From Havana, two sources close to the case told AFP the detainee would be extradited to Mexico, but did not specify a date or provide details about the process.

Communist Cuba has not officially commented on the reported arrest.

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