U.S. Charges 4 Chinese Firms With Selling Chemicals to Make Fentanyl

Four chemical companies based in China and eight Chinese nationals have been charged with trafficking chemicals used by Mexican drug cartels to manufacture vast quantities of fentanyl later sold in the United States, federal officials said on Friday.

The officials said that two of the defendants, the principal executive of one Chinese firm and its marketing manager, had been arrested overseas and taken to Hawaii for a court appearance, and that they would be brought to Manhattan to face prosecution.

The indictments announced Friday in New York are part of a strategy by the Drug Enforcement Administration to attack the scourge of fentanyl at every stage of the supply chain. The buyers of the chemicals were largely organizations like the Sinaloa cartel, formerly run by the Mexican drug lord known as El Chapo, which the Justice Department says is largely responsible for the influx of fentanyl into the United States.

Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said in a news conference that the firms advertised the so-called precursor chemicals online, and an indictment said they were packaged to resemble dog food, nuts or motor oil. Wuhan-based Hubei Amarvel Biotech Co., Mr. Garland added, “went as far as to guarantee ‘100 percent stealth shipping,’ and they provided proof of their success on their websites, including a screenshot of a shipping confirmation to Culiacán, Mexico, the Sinaloa cartel’s base of operations.”

Anne Milgram, the administrator of the D.E.A., said the companies also chemically camouflaged their goods in the lab.

“They even disguised the chemicals at a molecular level, adding a molecule to mask the precursors so they would not be detected as banned substances during transport,” Ms. Milgram said. “They taught their customers how to remove that molecule after they received the chemicals.”