Calderón: Resolution in the US does not detract from my government’s fight against cartels

García Luna is guilty, determines jury

Garcia Luna was convicted Tuesday of receiving bribes from the Sinaloa Cartel.

Federal prosecutors from the New York district of Brooklyn declared that Genaro García Luna accepted millions of dollars in bribes from the Cartel once led by Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, in exchange for protection against arrests, safe-conduct for cocaine shipments and leads on police operations.

The jury found García Luna guilty of all five counts, including trafficking cocaine with multiple persons and conspiracy to distribute cocaine.

García Luna is one of the highest-ranking Mexican officials accused of ties to drug trafficking. He directed the Federal Investigation Agency (AFI) of Mexico from 2001 to 2005 and was Secretary of Public Security from 2006.

The former official also collaborated closely with US counternarcotics and intelligence agencies in the framework of former President Felipe Calderón’s offensive against the cartels.

During a four-week trial, the jury heard from nine convicted cartel members who agreed to cooperate with prosecutors’ investigation and testified about the bribes García Luna received. Saritha Komatireddy, a prosecutor, told the jury that the Cartel could not have shipped drugs without her complicity.

“These leaders paid the defendant bribes for protection and they got what they paid for,” Komatireddy said in his closing statement on February 15, referring to Guzmán and two other high-ranking Sinaloa cartel figures.

Garcia Luna, he said, “used his official position in the government to win millions of dollars for himself from the people he was supposed to go after.”

The former official, who moved to the United States after leaving office and was arrested in 2019, had pleaded not guilty.

His lawyers argued that prosecutors relied on inconsistent narratives from convicted violent criminals implicating him to get revenge on the man who arrested them and in an attempt to reduce their prison sentences in the United States.

Defense attorney César de Castro portrayed García Luna as a hard-working family man and said his accusers had “incredible reasons to lie.”

Guzmán was sentenced to life in prison in 2019 after being convicted in Brooklyn on drug charges and conspiracy to murder. He is being held in a high security “Supermax” prison in Colorado.

-With information from the Reuters agency.