Final chapter of the biggest judicial scandal in Mexico in recent years. Genaro García Luna, Felipe Calderón’s Secretary of Public Security and architect of the war on drugs found guilty of collaborating with the Sinaloa Cartel, will be sentenced this Wednesday in New York. The highest-profile former Mexican official ever tried in a United States court faces a sentence of 20 years to life in prison. Controversial, powerful and feared, García Luna’s fate is in the hands of Judge Brian Cogan, the same one who sentenced Joaquín. El Chapo Guzmán to spend the rest of his life behind bars, in October 2019.
“Your honor, with the deepest of my feelings, I respectfully request that you allow me to return to my family as soon as possible,” García Luna requested in a letter sent in extremis to Judge Cogan, on Tuesday. In his last request for clemency, the former secretary assured that he had “a firm respect for the law,” he once again attacked former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador and his judicial reform and claimed that the verdict against him was given thanks to “false information provided.” by the Government of Mexico.” This is the second letter from the former official in less than a month, after remaining silent for almost five years. García did not want to nor could he defend his innocence on the stand, where he counts, although he requested to give a message to the court at the sentencing hearing.
The sentence ends a saga that has spanned almost five years. García Luna was captured on December 9, 2019 by DEA agents outside his apartment in Irving, Texas, in the process of acquiring US citizenship. The Prosecutor’s Office of the Eastern District of New York charged him with three counts of conspiracy to traffic cocaine, another for organized crime and one more for lying to the authorities, by ensuring that he had never committed any crime in his naturalization procedures.
His life took a dramatic turn. The former secretary had been awarded as one of the main allies of the United States in the war on drugs, decorated almost a dozen times by the CIA and the FBI, and managed to amass hundreds of millions of dollars as a contractor for the Mexican Government after his time. by the Calderón Cabinet. Years later, authorities accused him of receiving million-dollar bribes to favor the Sinaloa Cartel while he was at the top of the political system in Mexico.
The jury’s verdict came on February 21 of last year and was unanimous: guilty on all charges. The trial lasted five weeks and included the testimonies of more than a dozen drug traffickers, almost all of them captured and extradited during the Calderón Government, who described in great detail the delivery of millions of dollars and expensive gifts in exchange for impunity and profit. the favor of the former official. Some criminals even had police badges and uniforms, participated in the capture operations of their rivals and were the real bosses behind the forces of order in Mexico. The collusion between organized crime and the Mexican authorities ceased to be an open secret and became a legal truth, which spread to politicians, businessmen and major media outlets. The truth, however, came to light more than 3,000 kilometers across the border, under United States rules.
The trial was not without controversy. García Luna’s lawyers insisted that not a single physical evidence was presented to convincingly prove that their client was guilty and complained about the Prosecutor’s Office’s strategy, built around the stories of “murderers” and “kidnappers.” But the testimonies on the stand were withering and authentic master lectures on how drug trafficking works in Mexico.
Sergio Villarreal alias The Greata corrupt former police officer turned crime boss, told how the line between crime and the authorities was so narrow that there were agreements to share the profits or simulate the destruction of the seized drugs. Harold Poveda The Rabbita Colombian intermediary, recounted the time he was tortured to confess crimes that he had not committed before being presented to the media, the hallmark of the house during the former secretary’s administration.
Oscar Nava Valencia The Wolf He even paid three million dollars to meet for just 15 minutes with the former secretary. That was also the amount that Jesus disbursed King Zambada, El Mayo’s brother, to court him. The war on drugs, which has left hundreds of thousands dead in the country in almost two decades, also sat in the dock. And the myth collapsed. The only one who testified in favor of the former official was his wife, Linda Cristina Pereyra, on February 14, a week before being sentenced.
The sentencing was initially scheduled for June of last year, but the date was delayed at least five times, amid defense requests for a repeat trial. The request was dismissed by Judge Cogan in September of this year, after prosecutors revealed a “plot” to offer other inmates at the Brooklyn Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) bribes of half a million to two million dollars to testify. in favor of him. Everything was recorded on a smuggled phone from whoever received the offer. In 2020, the Prosecutor’s Office also obtained an audio in which the accused discussed with an informant, who pretended to be a false hitman for the Russian mafia, the possibility of “killing the families” of the bosses who were willing to testify against him. . The evidence did not reach trial, but it was a scandal.
The conviction is the last chapter of a unique case. If García Luna is sentenced to life, he will not be able to be tried for the cases opened in Mexico during the Government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who used the trial as a political weapon and presumed the defeat of Calderón, one of his main political adversaries. The National Action Party (PAN), the most voted opposition force in the country, never recognized the former secretary as one of its own, but paid dearly for the discredit in last June’s elections. Security cooperation with the United States continues to be crossed by the former official’s precedent, before as a point of comparison and now, given the possibility of cooperating with the authorities of that country. The accused has publicly rejected that possibility and has announced that he will appeal the sentence.
The shadow of the former head of the Federal Police also continues to loom after each media coup against drug trafficking, whether it is former Secretary of Defense Salvador Cienfuegos (arrested for drug trafficking and exonerated after diplomatic pressure from López Obrador) or Ismael May Zambada, co-founder of the Sinaloa Cartel who will see Cogan for the first time in court this week, on Friday. The trial against Zambada, captured last July, is shaping up to be the next thriller judicial of the Brooklyn court, a sequel after the fall of El Chapo and the most unusual of his associates, Genaro García Luna.
There are few comparable judicial precedents. Former Panamanian dictator Manuel Antonio Noriega was sentenced in 1992 to 40 years for drug trafficking. More recently, former President Juan Orlando Hernández, who turned Honduras into a narco-state during his term, was sentenced this year to 45 years, also in New York. His brother Tony Hernández, a drug trafficker turned deputy, is serving a life sentence starting in 2021. The last word will be Judge Cogan, while millions remain in suspense on the other side of the border.
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