<\/p>\n
The man once heralded as the architect of Mexico\u2019s war on drug cartels was sentenced to more than 38 years in a U.S. prison on Wednesday for taking massive bribes<\/a><\/span> to aid drug traffickers.<\/p>\n Genaro Garc\u00eda Luna, Mexico\u2019s former secretary of public security, was convicted by a New York jury in 2023 of taking millions of dollars in bribes to protect the violent Sinaloa cartel that he was supposedly combating. He is the highest-level Mexican government official to be convicted in the United States.<\/p>\n At his sentencing hearing before a federal judge in Brooklyn on Wednesday, Garc\u00eda Luna continued to maintain his innocence and said the case against him was based on false information from criminals and the Mexican government.<\/p>\n \u201cI have a firm respect for the law,\u201d he said in Spanish. \u201cI have not committed these crimes.\u201d<\/p>\n Garc\u00eda Luna, 56, led Mexico\u2019s federal police before he served in a cabinet-level position as the top security official from 2006 to 2012 under then-President Felipe Calder\u00f3n. At the time, Garc\u00eda Luna was hailed as an ally by the U.S. in its fight on drug trafficking.<\/p>\n But U.S. prosecutors said that in return for millions of dollars, he provided intelligence about investigations against the cartel, information about rival gangs and the safe passage of massive quantities of drugs.<\/p>\n After the sentencing, Calder\u00f3n said via the social platform X that he respects the court\u2019s decision but he never had \u201cverifiable evidence\u201d of Garc\u00eda Luna\u2019s criminal activities. Calder\u00f3n said taking on the cartels \u201cwas one of the most difficult decisions of my life. But I would do it again, because it is the right thing to do.\u201d<\/p>\n Earlier outside the courthouse, a group of about 15 protesters celebrated the verdict. Some held a banner that said, in Spanish, \u201cCalderon did know,\u201d while others brandished signs denouncing his political party.<\/p>\n Prosecutors had asked for a life sentence. Garc\u00eda Luna\u2019s lawyers had argued that he should get no more than 20 years.<\/p>\n U.S. District Judge Brian Cogan said he wasn\u2019t moved by past accolades that Garc\u00eda Luna received for his work in the war on drugs.<\/p>\n \u201cThat was your cover,\u201d Cogan said before imposing the sentence. \u201cYou are guilty of these crimes, sir. You can\u2019t parade these words and say, \u2018I\u2019m police officer of the year.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Besides the sentence of 38 years and four months, the judge imposed a $2 million fine.<\/p>\n During the trial, photos were shown of Garc\u00eda Luna shaking hands with former President Barack Obama and speaking with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former Sen. John McCain.<\/p>\n But prosecutors said Garc\u00eda Luna secretly advanced a drug trafficking conspiracy that resulted in the deaths of thousands of American and Mexican citizens. He ensured that drug traffickers were notified in advance of raids and sabotaged legitimate police operations aimed at apprehending cartel leaders, they said.<\/p>\n Drug traffickers were able to ship over 1 million kilograms of cocaine through Mexico and into the United States using planes, trains, trucks and submarines while Garc\u00eda Luna held his posts, prosecutors said.<\/p>\n During former Sinaloa kingpin Joaquin \u201cEl Chapo\u201d Guzm\u00e1n\u2019s trial in the same court in 2018, a former cartel member testified<\/a><\/span> that he personally delivered at least $6 million in payoffs to Garc\u00eda Luna and that cartel members agreed to pool up to $50 million to pay for his protection.<\/p>\n \u201cHe enabled the cartel. He protected the cartel. He was the cartel,\u201d Assistant U.S. Attorney Saritha Komatireddy told the judge Wednesday.<\/p>\n Garc\u00eda Luna enabled a corrupt system that allowed violent cartels to thrive and distribute drugs that killed multitudes of people, she added.<\/p>\n \u201cIt may not have been the defendant pulling the trigger, but he has blood on his hands,\u201d Komatireddy said.<\/p>\n Prosecutors also said Garc\u00eda Luna plotted to undo last year\u2019s verdict by seeking to bribe or corruptly convince multiple inmates at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn to support false allegations that two government witnesses communicated via contraband cellular phones in advance of the trial.<\/p>\n Garc\u00eda Luna\u2019s lawyer, Cesar de Castro, said the defense intends to appeal the sentence. He said his client is someone who \u201chas served his country\u201d and has now lost his money, his reputation as well as policies he championed in Mexico.<\/p>\n \u201cHe has lost close to everything. All that remains is his wonderful family,\u201d de Castro said.<\/p>\n In Mexico, newly inaugurated President Claudia Sheinbaum briefly commented on the case Tuesday, saying: \u201cThe big issue here is how someone who was awarded by United States agencies, who ex-President Calder\u00f3n said wonderful things about his security secretary, today is prisoner in the United States because it\u2019s shown that he was tied to drug trafficking.\u201d<\/p>\n Garc\u00eda Luna\u2019s arrest and conviction became a political cudgel that the governing party of Sheinbaum and her predecessor, Andr\u00e9s Manuel L\u00f3pez Obrador, used in this year\u2019s Mexican presidential election against Calder\u00f3n\u2019s weakened National Action Party. They sought to paint Garc\u00eda Luna as the poster child of corruption and Calder\u00f3n as the man responsible for soaring violence from the drug war.<\/p>\n L\u00f3pez Obrador and now Sheinbaum turned away from direct confrontation with the cartels, instead focusing on what they consider root causes of violence, such as poverty. But the new strategy has failed to significantly lower the level of violence.<\/p>\n L\u00f3pez Obrador had a very different reaction in 2020 when U.S. authorities arrested former Mexican Defense Secretary Salvador Cienfuegos for allegedly colluding with a drug cartel. In that case, L\u00f3pez Obrador accused the Drug Enforcement Administration of fabricating evidence against Cienfuegos and protested until the U.S. government dropped the charges. He was returned to Mexico, where he was promptly cleared and released<\/a><\/span>.<\/p>\n – Larry Neumeister and Cedar Attanasio, AP News<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The man once heralded as the architect of Mexico\u2019s war on drug cartels was sentenced to more than 38 years in a U.S. prison on Wednesday for taking massive bribes to aid drug traffickers. Genaro Garc\u00eda Luna, Mexico\u2019s former secretary of public security, was convicted by a New York jury in 2023 of taking millions of dollars…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":124,"featured_media":9008,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/dims.apnews.com\/dims4\/default\/4aa2595\/2147483647\/strip\/false\/crop\/4032x2268+0+0\/resize\/1486x836!\/quality\/90\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fassets.apnews.com%2F38%2F96%2Fa6d65f4c08a0d317c17c6218074f%2F9af43a3f09314d2caba116f9258e511e","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[182],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9007","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-security-public-safety"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9007","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/124"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9007"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9007\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9009,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9007\/revisions\/9009"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9008"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9007"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9007"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}