Eduardo Murillo and Gustavo Castillo
Newspaper La Jornada
Thursday February 23, 2023, p. 4
Genaro García Luna’s time at the Ministry of Public Security (SSP) was full of scandals, which evidenced his ties, and those of his immediate subordinates, with organized crime.
In May 2007, nearly 50 armed Gulf cartel men aboard a convoy of trucks traveled from Caborca to Cananea, Sonora, where they clashed with municipal police.
The episode was denounced by the then governor of the entity, Eduardo Bours, who pointed out the possible complicity of the Federal Preventive Police (PFP) in allowing the convoy of the attackers to travel almost 300 kilometers of roads without being disturbed.
As a consequence, Javier Garza Palacios, then head of Regional Security of the PFP, and who had worked with García Luna for years before, at the Federal Investigation Agency (AFI), was fired.
The dismissal, according to the official report, was to promote the fight against crime in accordance with the principles of legality, efficiency, professionalism and honesty
.
Despite everything, Garza Palacios was appointed SSP attaché at the Mexican embassy in Colombia.
The PFP became the Federal Police in 2009.
operative against Rabbit
Another case that shows acts of corruption in the institution under the command of García Luna, and that involved his closest collaborators, was that of one of the witnesses who appeared in the New York court against García Luna: Harold Mauricio Poveda Ortega, RabbitColombian drug supplier to the Beltrán Leyva cartel.
In October 2008, the PFP seized Rabbit a residence located in Santa Rosa Xochiac, near the Desierto de los Leones, in Mexico City, in an operation led by Víctor Gerardo Garay Cadena, commissioner of the corporation.
The police action, at midnight, ended in a party with drugs, kidnapping and torture of the detainees.
to the cry of Now the party has started!
the agents broke into the residence when Rabbit He was celebrating his birthday. Poveda Ortega was able to flee through the back door, without anyone chasing him, but witnesses indicated that Garay Cadena allowed him to flee.
According to testimonies from the detainees, Garay Cadena turned the operation into a party, disposed of the drugs that were in the place for the consumption of the PFP commanders, beat the detainees and made them jump into the pool where they had emptied ice.
He took the keys to their homes from those who lived in Mexico City to steal cash they kept. The guests from Colombia were forced to call their families to deposit up to half a million dollars.
It was until a day later that the operation was announced. The official version was that a group of Colombian drug traffickers had been arrested.
After all the facts became known, Garay Cadena resigned on October 31, in the midst of an investigation by the Attorney General’s Office into his ties to the Ismael cartel. the may Zambada.
Poveda Ortega was finally arrested on November 4, 2010, and extradited to the United States.
public image
García Luna’s obsession with his public image also caused damage to human rights and the treasury.
García Luna was director of the Federal Investigation Agency and his second in command was Luis Cárdenas Palomino, today on trial for torture, when they staged for television the staging of the arrest of the Frenchwoman Florence Cassez and the Mexican Israel Vallarta, still jailed for that episode.
The action of the police was so disgraceful that the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation ordered the release of Cassez in 2013, because the staging of his apprehension caused a corrupting effect
that invalidated the entire process against him.
García Luna spent 118 million pesos for the production of the telenovela The teambroadcast by Televisa, whose purpose was to promote the work of the Federal Police.
The amount appears in the quote delivered by the television station to the director of Social Communication of the SSP, Verónica Peñuñuri.
The telenovela, which premiered on May 9, 2011, had to go off the air that same month, due to its low rating of only 17.5 points.
