Actor, Sean Penn helped authorities capture ‘El Chapo’

A clandestine meeting between US actor Sean Penn and Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman in the Mexican jungle helped lead to the drug kingpin’s capture this week, a Mexican official said.

The AFP reported that US rock magazine Rolling Stone posted online on Saturday an interview between Penn and Guzman as well as an October 2 picture showing the Oscar-winning actor shaking hands with the mustachioed Sinaloa drug cartel leader, who is wearing a blue shirt.

Penn writes that the 58-year-old Guzman gave him a “compadre” hug when they met at a Mexican jungle clearing and had a seven-hour sitdown followed by phone and video interviews.

“I supply more heroin, methamphetamine, cocaine and marijuana than anybody else in the world,” Guzman told Penn in a stunning admission of his criminal enterprise over sips of tequila.

“I have a fleet of submarines, airplanes, trucks and boats,” Guzman said in the meeting, which Mexican actress Kate del Castillo helped to arrange.

Despite Penn’s cloak-and-dagger efforts to keep the gathering secret, a Mexican federal official told AFP that authorities “had knowledge of this meeting” and that it helped lead to Friday’s recapture of the world’s most wanted man in his northwestern home state of Sinaloa.

The official declined to say whether Penn and del Castillo are being investigated over the clandestine meeting.

Mexican Attorney General Arely Gomez said on Friday that Guzman had met with unnamed actors and producers in the hope of making a biopic about himself, which helped locate him. She said it was part of a “new line of investigation,” without elaborating.

Rolling Stone also published a video showing Guzman without a mustache, talking about why he decided to go into drug trafficking after the age of 15 because there were “no job opportunities.”

“Unfortunately, where I grew up, there was and there is no other way to survive,” Guzman said.

Asked if he feels responsible for the high level of addictions in the world, he said: “It’s false. The day that I don’t exist, it won’t reduce drug trafficking.”

In a text message exchange days after their meeting, Guzman discusses a marine helicopter raid that almost captured him on October 6. He downplayed injuries to his face and leg reported by the authorities, saying: “Not like they said. I only hurt my leg a little bit.”