'El Chapo' jury hears secretly recorded drug deal

Dec. 13 (UPI) -- Jurors in the trail of accused Mexican drug kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman heard audio Thursday of Guzman coordinating a cocaine deal.

The recording features Guzman negotiating with a member of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, about a cocaine shipment, as witness Jorge Milton Cifuentes, who worked with Guzman as the head of a Colombian drug trafficking clan, explained they had received inferior drugs from the group before.

"Tomorrow I will send a technician over there to see it," Guzman said in the recording.

Guzman insists the six tons of cocaine be inspected before sending a $50,000 advance and eventually negotiates to have purchase the drugs at $2,000 per kilo for the first two tons and receive the other four tons on credit.

It wasn't clear who recorded the call, but it appeared to have emerged from an investigation into Cifuentes, who said Guzman was struggling with a system meant to block people from listening in on his phone calls at the time.

Cifuentes also testified that the deal discussed in the recording never went through, although he was unsure why.

During his testimony, Cifuentes recalled he and Guzman met at a party at Guzman's hide-out in the Sierra Madre mountains in 2003 to celebrate the second anniversary of his first escape from prison.

After the party Cifuentes decided to buy Guzman a helicopter to "fly in a more civilized way" after landing on a steeply inclined covert airstrip. That same year he also began sending Guzman shipments of cocaine.

In 2007, Cifuentes fled to Ecuador after his brother -- a former pilot for the Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar -- was killed and began arranging drug deals with the FARC Guzman. He also testified he bribed the Ecuadorean Navy and the Colombian police for protection.