A former member of Mexico’s presidential cabinet was convicted on Tuesday in the United States of taking massive bribes to protect the violent drug cartels he was tasked with fighting.
Under close scrutiny, an anonymous jury in New York federal court deliberated three days before reaching a verdict in the drug trafficking case against former public safety secretary Genaro García Luna.
He is the highest-ranking current or former Mexican official ever tried in the United States.
KEY WITNESS TESTIFIES IN TRIAL OF MEXICAN FORMER PUBLIC SECURITY HEAD GENARO GARCÍA LUNA
García Luna, who has denied the allegations, led Mexico’s federal police and then served as its top public safety officer from 2006 to 2012. His lawyers said the allegations were based on lies by criminals they wanted to punish his drug-fighting efforts and getting sentence breaks for themselves by helping prosecutors.
He showed no apparent reaction to hearing the verdict in a case with political ramifications on both sides of the border.
Current Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has railed throughout the trial against former President Felipe Calderón’s administration for, at the very least, putting García Luna in charge of Mexico’s security. López Obrador’s spokesman, Jesús Ramírez, tweeted after the verdict that “justice has come” to a Calderón ally and that “the crimes committed against our people will never be forgotten.”
García Luna’s work also introduced him to top American politicians and other officials, who viewed him as a key partner in the fight against cartels as Washington embarked on a $1.6 billion push to strengthen law enforcement and stem the flow of drugs.
The Americans have not been charged with wrongdoing, and while suspicions have long swirled around García Luna, the trial did not delve into the extent of US officials’ knowledge of them prior to his arrest in 2019. López Obrador, however, specifically suggested that Washington investigate its own law enforcement and intelligence officials who worked with García Luna during the Calderón administration.
Former Mexican public safety secretary Genaro García Luna has been convicted by an anonymous New York jury of drug trafficking. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte, File)
A list of former smugglers and former Mexican officials testified that García Luna took millions of dollars in cartel cash, met with major traffickers and held off law enforcement.
It was “the best investment they had,” said Sergio “El Grande” Villarreal Barragan, a former federal police officer who worked for the cartels and then as his main job.
He and other witnesses said that under García Luna’s watch, police briefed traffickers on impending raids, ensured cocaine could circulate freely through the country, colluded with cartels to raid rivals and did other favors. . A former smuggler said García Luna shared a document that reflected US law enforcement information about a huge shipment of cocaine seized in Mexico circa 2007.
García Luna, 54, did not testify at trial, though his wife took the stand in an apparent attempt to portray their assets in Mexico as legitimately acquired and upper-middle class, but not lavish. The couple moved to Miami in 2012 when the Mexican administration changed and he became a security consultant.
García Luna’s attorney, César de Castro, emphasized that the prosecutors’ case relied on the testimony of admitted offenders, with no tapes, messages, or a documented money trail to corroborate them.
“Nothing confirms what these epic assassins, torturers, con men and drug traffickers have said about Genaro García Luna,” defense attorney César de Castro said in a closing argument.
García Luna was convicted on charges including involvement in an ongoing criminal enterprise, which carries a potential sentence of 20 years to life in prison. His sentencing is set for June 27.
The trial was peppered with glimpses of narco-extravaganzas such as a private zoo with a lion, a hippopotamus, white tigers and more. Jurors have heard of tons of cocaine traveling across Latin America in shipping containers, fast boats, private jets, planes, trains and even submarines.
And there were terrible memories of the extraordinary violence these drugs fueled.
Witnesses described cartel murders and kidnappings, allegedly including the kidnapping of García Luna himself. There were reports of massacred police officers and drug rivals dismembered, skinned and dangled from bridges as cartel factions fought each other while buying police protection.
Witnesses said García Luna held meetings with cartel leaders in settings ranging from a country house to a car wash and collected boxes and bags full of drug money in safe houses, a cocaine-filled warehouse and a fancy restaurant of Mexico City.
A former smuggler, Óscar “El Lobo” Nava Valencia, said he personally overheard García Luna and a senior police official say they would be “with us” during a meeting with notorious Sinaloa cocaine cartel boss Joaquín.” El Chapo” Guzman. amidst a civil war of cartels. That session alone cost the drug gang $3 million, Nava Valencia said.
FORMER MEXICAN SECURITY ZARO ESCAPE HIMSELF UP TO $746 MILLION, AUTHORITIES REQUEST
Testimony also conveyed a secondhand claim that Calderón, the former president, tried to protect Guzmán from a major rival; Calderón called the allegation “absurd” and “an absolute lie”.
García Luna was arrested after testimony about his alleged graft surfaced during Guzman’s high-profile trial nearly four years ago in the same New York courtroom.
The former lawyer also faces various Mexican arrest warrants and charges related to government technology contracts, prison procurement and the botched US “Fast and Furious” investigation into suspicions that weapons were illegally making their way from the US to Mexican drug cartels . The Mexican government has also filed a civil lawsuit against García Luna and his alleged associates and businesses in Florida, seeking to recover $700 million that Mexico says it raised through bribery.
Anti-corruption activists gathered outside the courthouse to celebrate Tuesday’s verdict.
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“Our country is so bloodied with corruption,” said Carmen Paes, who blamed drug lords in her native Mexico for the disappearance of a nephew decades ago.
