a court of USA has condemned 38 years in prison to Genaro García Luna, former Secretary of Security of Mexico during the Felipe Calderón Administration, after a jury found him guilty of five crimes in the framework of a case for participating in a criminal organization related to drug trafficking and having ties to the Sinaloa Cartel.
Judge Brian Cogan, of the Federal Court for the Eastern District of New York, has indicated that the five years that the former official has spent in prison will be subtracted from the 460 months to which he has been sentenced. Furthermore, it has imposed a fine of two million dollars (1.84 million euros) for the crime of conspiracy to distribute international cocaine and may spend five years of probation.
«You have a double life, you will dress very elegantly, you will be able to say that you respect the law and you surely believe it. But His behavior is the same as that of El Chapo. There are people who can dress very well. Have very good manners. But that does not imply that at the same time they are capable of doing terrible things,” Cogan expressed during his speech, according to the Public Broadcasting System of the Mexican State (SPR).
García Luna, who has assured that he will appeal the sentence of the US Justice because has pleaded not guilty to all chargeswas found guilty of participating in a continuing criminal enterprise, conspiracy to obtain, import and distribute thousands of kilos of cocaine to the United States, and making false statements to US immigration officials after his arrest in December 2019.
The case dates back to the six-year term of Felipe Calderón (2006-2012) when the United States, through the Agency for Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), deliberately introduced some 2,500 firearms with the aim of identifying and arresting buyers and distributors in what became known as operation ‘Fast and Furious’.
However, the trace of all this weapons was lost and ended up in the hands of the Sinaloa Cartel. The scandal broke out in 2011 when it was confirmed that one of the weapons in this arsenal was used to kill a United States Border Police agent in December 2010, a crime for which a Mexican citizen named Heraclio Osorio Arellanes was arrested.
García Luna, who was head of the Federal Investigation Agency (AFI), was arrested in the town of Dallas, in the state of Texas, after charges were filed against him in New York for conspiring to trafficking drugs and making false statementsin addition to having received millions of dollars from Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán’s cartel. García Luna would have tried to hide the help provided to drug traffickers.
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