Drug lord El Chapo’s wife ‘reborn’ on Milan catwalk
23 September 2024 4:17pm
The wife of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, the Mexican drug lord, has appeared on the catwalk at Milan Fashion Week a year after being released from prison.
Emma Coronel Aispuro, 35, a former model who married El Chapo when she was a teenager, appeared in a regal wedding dress as part of what the designer called her “rebirth”.
Ms Coronel was sentenced to three years in prison in 2021 after pleading guilty to charges related to helping her husband’s Sinaloa cartel, including taking part in his escape from custody in 2015.
Prosecutors determined she “worked closely with the command and control structure” of the cartel.
Under her plea deal, she agreed to hand over about $1.5 million in illicit funds from the cartel. Her sentence was later reduced and she was freed from jail in September last year.
El Chapo, 67, whose criminal empire was known for its brutality and murderous rampages, continues to serve a life sentence – without the possibility of parole – in a supermax prison in Colorado.
Ms Coronel’s father, Inés Coronel, was also a senior member of the Sinaloa cartel and is serving a 10-year sentence in Mexico for drug smuggling.
However, on Sunday, Ms Coronel, who has both Mexican and US citizenship, dispatched with her “past marked with controversy” in a bid to “rewrite her future”, according to LA-based designer April Black Diamond, who made the cartel wife the star of her spring/summer 2024 collection.
Her surprise return to the modelling world took place in Palazzo Serbelloni, a neoclassical palace in Milan, where Napoleon once lived.
Ms Coronel wore a tiara and a heavy white gown adorned with jewels.