Mexico’s ex-public security chief Genaro García Luna sentenced to 38-plus years in U.S. for taking cartel bribes
The Hindu
Genaro García Luna, Mexico's former security official, sentenced to 38 years in U.S. prison for aiding drug cartels.
The man once heralded as the architect of Mexico’s war on drug cartels was sentenced to more than 38 years in a U.S. prison on Wednesday (October 16, 2024) for taking massive bribes to aid drug traffickers.
Genaro García Luna, Mexico’s 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.
At his sentencing hearing before a federal judge in Brooklyn on Wednesday, García Luna continued to maintain his innocence and said the case against him was based on false information from criminals and the Mexican government.
“I have a firm respect for the law,” he said in Spanish. “I have not committed these crimes.”
García Luna, 56, led Mexico’s federal police before he served in a cabinet-level position as the top security official from 2006 to 2012 under then-President Felipe Calderón. At the time, García Luna was hailed as an ally by the U.S. in its fight on drug trafficking.
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.
After the sentencing, Mr. Calderón said via the social platform X that he respects the court's decision but he never had “verifiable evidence” of García Luna's criminal activities. Mr. Calderón said taking on the cartels “was one of the most difficult decisions of my life. But I would do it again, because it is the right thing to do.”
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