Two Indian companies indicted in the US for importing ingredients used in the opioid fentanyl

Written by Jonathan Stempel

NEW YORK – Two Indian chemical companies have been charged with importing ingredients for the highly addictive opioid fentanyl into the United States and Mexico, the US Department of Justice said Monday.

Athos Chemicals and Raxuter Chemicals, both based in Gujarat, were each charged in Brooklyn with distributing the ingredients and conspiring to distribute them.

Raxuter and chief executive Bhavesh Lathiya, 36, were also charged with smuggling, and importing illegal drugs into medium-sized businesses.

Lathiya was arrested on Saturday in New York and ordered to be held pending trial, after prosecutors called him a plane crash and a serious danger to the public.

“The Department of Justice targets all the links that exist across countries and continents and often end in disaster in the United States,” said US Attorney General Merrick Garland in a statement.

The public defender representing Lathiya declined to comment. Athos and Raxuter did not immediately respond to similar requests outside of business hours.

Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid about 50 times stronger than heroin and 100 times stronger than morphine.

Opioids are responsible for 82,000 deaths in the US in 2022, ten times the number in 1999, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Prosecutors say that beginning in February 2024, the defendants provided “precursor” chemicals they knew would be used to make fentanyl, and concealed their efforts by falsifying packaging, falsifying tax forms, and making false declarations when crossing borders.

Another lawsuit said in October 2024 video calls with an undercover agent posing as a fentanyl manufacturer, Lathiya admitted to selling 20 kilograms of the precursor chemical 1-boc-4-piperidone, and suggested they were mislabeled as an antacid.

Lathiya did this after the agent told her that her Mexican customers were “very happy with the quality of what you sent me,” and the “yield” from the resulting fentanyl, the lawsuit said.

Another lawsuit said Athos admitted last February to selling 100 kilograms of the same chemical to a known drug trafficker in Mexico who was making fentanyl in connection with a drug-trafficking organization.

Lathiya faces up to 53 years in prison if convicted, the Department of Justice said.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Matthew Lewis)