Actor Sean Penn is under investigation for a Rolling Stone magazine interview with drug kingpin Joaquin Guzman, ABC News reported, citing unidentified people in the Mexican government.
Kate del Castillo, the Mexican actress whom Penn says helped arrange the meeting, is also being investigated, the report says.
The U.S. Department of Justice declined to comment on the Rolling Stone story and whether the interview led to Guzman’s recapture by Mexican authorities on Friday, ABC says.
Penn spoke with Guzman, known as “El Chapo,” for seven hours in October while he was on the run from the authorities, and had follow-up interviews by phone and video, the Rolling Stone said.
Guzman told Penn in a video recording he had tried drugs but isn’t a drug addict and hadn’t taken any drugs in the last 20 years, the report says.
He started to grow and sell marijuana and poppies at the age of 15 to survive, he said, according to the report.
Guzman was first caught in Guatemala in 1993 and extradited to Mexico. He escaped from a high-security prison in Jalisco state in 2001.
