The United States Treasury Department released a statement on Monday in which they have officially designated the Peruvian Maoist rebel group Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso) as narcotics traffickers.

John E. Smith, the Acting Director of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, stated: “Since its founding over three decades ago, the Shining Path has evolved from a militant terrorist group to a criminal narco-terrorist organization responsible for trafficking cocaine throughout South America.

“Our action today supports the Government of Peru’s efforts to actively combat the group, and we will continue to target the Shining Path and its narco-terrorist activities,” he added.

The U.S.Treasury has named three Shining Path leaders as drug traffickers and has gone ahead and frozen their assets in the U.S. The three named leaders are Florindo Flores Hala and brothers Victor and Jorge Quispe Palomino. Victor and Jorge Quispe are still at large, while Florindo Flores is currently serving a life sentence for terrorism.

Shining Path -- a group the U.S. has now described as taxing the production, processing and transport of cocaine -- has been on the U.S. State Department's list of terrorist organizations since 1997.

As reported in the BBC, figures provided by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime inform that Peru has, since 2013, beaten out Colombia as the world's largest producer of coca, the raw ingredient used to make cocaine.

In 2012, the group, in a move that shocked Peruvians, started to get into politics.

As reported by the New York Times, Shining Path, which has a history of terrorizing the nation with assassinations, bombings and beheadings, began gathering signatures in order to create a political party and participate in the very same democratic process they had earlier sought to violently end.