Ratcheting up pressure on the Zetas, one of Mexico’s most ruthless drug trafficking organizations, the U.S. Treasury Department placed Kingpin Act sanctions on two Mexican nationals it said are are financial operatives for the Zetas drug cartel. They were added to a blacklist that freezes their assets and bars Americans from doing business with them.

The sanctions, announced Tuesday by the Treasury Department, came a week after Mexico captured the Zetas leader, Miguel Ángel Treviño Morales, and less than a year after its previous commander was killed. The two men added to the list, José Odilón Ramírez Perales and Ismael López Guerrero, are responsible for laundering and smuggling tens of millions of dollars, according to the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control. The office has sanctioned dozens of Zetas and scores of other drug traffickers in an effort to curtail their financing by denying them access to banks and financial services with links to the United States. Los Zetos Press Release