(Photo: Justin Lane/EFE)
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador announced Thursday that he is considering suing lawyer César de Castro, who defends former Mexican Security Secretary Genaro García Luna, for non-pecuniary damages, for suggesting he received bribes from drug traffickers in his 2006 political campaign.
“I am making a consultation because I am seeing if it is possible for me to file a complaint for moral damages against García Luna’s lawyer and those who are responsible, in the United States,” the president declared in his daily press conference.
“Today I gave instructions to the Secretary of Foreign Relations (Marcelo Ebrard), to carry out the analysis, to consult lawyers, to see how we proceed,” he added.
His warning comes after De Castro asked drug lord Jesús “El Rey” Zambada, a witness in the García Luna trial in New York, on Tuesday if he remembered that he had paid $7 million to a López Obrador aide in his first presidential campaign
For this reason, López Obrador indicated that he is considering filing the lawsuit in his personal capacity or in his capacity as head of state because “the president of Mexico cannot be the one who becomes a hostage to foreign governments or lawyers or foreign characters.”
“The only thing that I have in my head, apart from the fact that I do not accept that my honesty is questioned, because it is what I consider most important in my life, in addition to the fact that I do not accept that, it is in the middle that I am president of Mexico. You cannot govern a country without moral authority,” he commented.
The president announced that he will look for a lawyer to collect a percentage of the proceeds from the lawsuit and the rest of the money will be “delivered to relatives of victims of the war that unleashed” former President Felipe Calderón (2006-2012), of whom García Luna was Secretary of Security.
“I am seeing if it is possible to do it because it is not Andrés Manuel, it is the president of Mexico and this has to be made very clear,” he said.
The arguments of the trial of García Luna, who led the “war against drug trafficking” in Mexico, concluded on Wednesday, so now all that remains is the deliberation of the jury.
The former secretary faces four charges of drug trafficking and collusion with drug traffickers and a fifth of lying in his application for naturalization in the United States.
-With information from EFE.
