Mexico’s ex-security chief jailed in U.S. for taking bribes from drug cartels

The former security chief behind former Mexican President Felipe Calderon’s crackdown on drug trafficking between 2006 and 2012, Genaro Garcia Luna, has been sentenced to 38 years in a United States prison for taking millions in bribes from drug cartels.

56-year-old Garcia Luna was sentenced to prison on Wednesday, October 16, 2024, for aiding the very drug cartels he was tasked with dismantling.

Garcia Luna was convicted at a high-profile trial in New York last year of taking millions of dollars in bribes to allow the Sinaloa Cartel to smuggle tons of cocaine.

District Judge Brian Cogan sentenced Luna, who served as secretary of public security under Calderon, to 460 months in prison and a $2 million fine at a hearing in federal court in Brooklyn.

Prosecutors had sought a life sentence.

U.S. Attorney Breon Peace said in a statement: “Today’s sentencing of Genaro Garcia Luna is a critical step in upholding justice and the rule of law.

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“His betrayal of the public trust and the people he was sworn to protect resulted in more than one million kilograms of lethal narcotics imported into our communities and unleashed untold violence here and in Mexico.”

Garcia Luna’s month-long trial shone a spotlight on the corruption of the highest-ranking Mexican government figure ever to face trial in the United States.

It also opened a window on the vast resources of the Sinaloa Cartel under Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, who is now serving a life sentence in a U.S. penitentiary.

At his trial, prosecutors said Garcia Luna, who held high-ranking security positions in Mexico from 2001 until 2012, was the cartel’s “partner in crime.”

That included his time as the architect of Calderon’s crackdown on Mexico’s drug gangs between 2006 and 2012, AFP reported.

But instead of stopping the smuggling, Garcia Luna took millions of dollars in bribes from the Sinaloa Cartel to allow safe passage of narcotics shipments.

According to prosecutors, he tipped off drug traffickers about law enforcement operations, targeted rival cartel members for arrest and placed other corrupt officials in positions of power.

Garcia Luna served as chief of the Mexican equivalent of the FBI from 2001 until 2006, when he was elevated to secretary of public security, essentially running the federal police force and most counter-drug operations.

Calderon said after the sentencing that he never had “verifiable evidence” or information from Mexican or foreign intelligence agencies implicating Garcia Luna in illegal activities.

“I am in favor of those who break the law assuming the consequences of their actions,” the ex-president wrote on social media.

The Star