Kate del Castillo liked the idea that Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán invested in launching her tequila Honor del Castillo, produced by the company Tequila Honor LLC in partnership with Feliciano Vivanco y Asociados, from Jalisco.
“It would be great (divino),” said the Mexican actress when Andrés Granados Flores, lawyer of the leader of the Sinaloa cartel, suggested her to invite Guzmán to her business.
The conversation took place on April 15, 2015 via text messages, eight months after the actress and Granados started talking.
On that day the star of “The Queen of the South” sent some images of her tequila to Granados so that he would show them to Guzmán.
“I will send you something now! I hope you can show it to him!! It would make me very happy!,” del Castillo wrote to Granados ignoring that the conversation was being monitored like the rest of the communications of Guzmán's associates in order to recapture the drug kingpin, who had escaped from prison on July 11, 2015.
In another conversation, on July 10, 2015, they talked about signing a contract.
“We need that your friend sends the contract to us, so that we can see how it will be,” the lawyer wrote to the actress.
After the messages exchanged between Del Castillo Negrete and Granados Flores, the Attorney General's Office began investigating whether "El Chapo" Guzmán had business relations with the actress.
The company Tequila Honor was registered in Delaware, United States and an application was filed to register the brand at Mexico's Industrial Property Institute (IMPI) in 2014 almost simultaneously.
One of the lawyers in charge of the paperwork is Xavier García Méndez Balderrama, but he has denied knowing the actress or the shareholders of the tequila company.
According to García, he filed all the applications on behalf of René Valdez, executive director of Tequila Honor, who also dealt with the producers of the alcoholic beverage: Felipe Vivanco y Asociados.
The tequila was announced by the actress as her first business project aimed at the Hispanic community in the United States. Del Castillo sent to Granados most of the promotional images posted on the website of Tequila Honor.
She event sent him the videos for investors, that can be seen on the social networks of Del Castillo. “The video is very cool,” said the lawyer to the actress. “I will talk to him about your tequila project, maybe he gets interested and you become partners,” he added referring to Guzmán, to which the actress replied: “Incredible!!!”.