Leading GOP Senator Calls for Probe of Avantor Sales in Mexico
- Cornyn likens U.S. company’s role to Purdue in drug epidemic
- Condemns chemical sales to an ‘unregulated and corrupt market’
Photographer: Joe Raedle/Getty Images
A top Republican lawmaker said he will press the Senate to investigate Avantor Inc. and other companies that sold internationally controlled drug-making chemicals into Mexico’s “unregulated and corrupt market” amid a narcotics epidemic in the U.S.
Texas Senator John Cornyn, who serves on both the Judiciary Committee and the bipartisan Caucus on International Narcotics Control, credited an investigation by Bloomberg Businessweek that exposed how Avantor’s Mexican sales of an essential heroin-making chemical, called acetic anhydride, were easily diverted by narcotics syndicates. Mexican drug cartels are the virtual monopoly suppliers of heroin sold in the U.S., where supply and overdose deaths skyrocketed in the last decade.