NEW YORK – A once-powerful Mexican authorities minister was convicted by a US jury Tuesday of aiding the very drug smuggling he was tasked with cracking down on.
Genaro Garcia Luna, public safety minister underneath Felipe Calderon’s presidency from 2006 to 2012, was discovered responsible on all 5 counts following a high-profile trial in New York.
The month-long proceedings shone a highlight on the corruption of the very best rating Mexican authorities determine ever to face trial within the United States.
It additionally opened a window on the huge sources of the Sinaloa Cartel underneath Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, who’s now serving a life sentence in a US penitentiary.
Garcia Luna was convicted of receiving huge sums of cash to permit the very traffickers he was tasked with clamping down on to smuggle tons of cocaine.
He sat impassively in Brooklyn federal courtroom because the responsible verdicts have been learn out, his spouse and two kids trying on.
He faces a compulsory minimal sentence of 20 years imprisonment and a most of life behind bars.
“Garcia Luna, who once stood at the pinnacle of law enforcement in Mexico, will now live the rest of his days having been revealed as a traitor to his country and to the honest members of law enforcement who risked their lives to dismantle drug cartels,” stated US prosecutor Breon Peace, welcoming the decision.
A spokesperson for the present Mexican authorities, which has accused Garcia Luna of stealing greater than $200 million of public funds and has demanded his extradition, stated in a tweet that “justice has arrived.”
Prosecutors argued that Garcia Luna, who held high-ranking safety positions in Mexico from 2001 till 2012, was the cartel’s “partner in crime.”
That included throughout his time because the architect of then-president Calderon’s crackdown on Mexico’s drug gangs between 2006 and 2012.
But as a substitute of stopping the smuggling, Garcia Luna took tens of millions of {dollars} in bribes from the Sinaloa to permit secure passage of narcotics shipments.
FBI equal
US authorities attorneys stated he tipped off traffickers about regulation enforcement operations, focused rival cartel members for arrest and positioned different corrupt officers in positions of energy.
The 5 costs ranged from cocaine trafficking conspiracy to creating false statements.
Garcia Luna served as chief of the Mexican equal of the FBI from 2001 till 2006, when he was elevated to turn into secretary of public safety, basically operating the federal police power and most counterdrug operations.
Nine of the 26 witnesses who testified towards Garcia Luna are accused drug traffickers extradited from Mexico and collaborating with US prosecutors in trade for doable leniency in their very own trials.
They included former a number of high-level cartel bosses, together with Jesus “Rey” Zambada, Sergio Villarreal and Oscar “Lobo” Valencia.
They claimed to have paid tens of millions of {dollars} to Garcia Luna collectively, and thru Arturo Beltran Leyva, who ran his personal drug cartel and served as a go-between with Garcia Luna, often called a “super cop,” in trade for defense.
Garcia Luna, a mechanical engineer by commerce, was detained in Texas in December 2019. He declined to testify on his personal behalf.
The world’s greatest narcotics group at one time, the Sinaloa Cartel moved multi-ton a great deal of cocaine every month from producing nations within the Andean area up via Mexico and on to streets in Europe and North America. — Agence France-Presse
Source: www.gmanetwork.com
