The DEA began following in the footsteps of Genaro García Luna more than a decade ago. This was confirmed this Thursday by Miguel Madrigal, an anti-narcotics agent called to testify in the trial in New York against the Secretary of Public Security of the Government of Felipe Calderón (2006-2012). After Sergio Villarreal Barragán was arrested The big one In September 2010, Madrigal met with the drug lord for several hours and gave information about bribes that the official from the Beltrán Leyva Cartel allegedly received. He did not specify the date of the meeting. “He detailed information about those deals,” said the official, who was between 2008 and 2015 at the Agency’s office in Mexico City. The witness also spoke of Champs Elysées [Campos Eliseos], a luxurious restaurant in the capital that was in front of the US Embassy, where the money deliveries took place, according to intelligence sources. “We had information that senior officials received bribes from the cartels there,” he said.
Madrigal pointed out in several images where the restaurant was located on the map and said that US agents went to the site to see if they could identify information that would help them learn more about the money deliveries. “We were looking for cameras,” the witness commented. But there wasn’t. The DEA was particularly concerned about the information it had received because it was constantly exchanging sensitive data about criminal groups with the Federal Police, at the time under Calderón’s command. Intelligence was shared, telephone tracking, locations of suspicious homes and the tracking of drug traffickers’ vehicles, for example.
The witness pointed directly to Édgar Bayardo, a former commander of the Federal Police. After the 2008 cartel war between Joaquín’s group El Chapo Guzmán and the faction of the Beltrán Leyva brothers, the DEA began to realize that Bayardo only shared information about capos of the Arturo Beltrán group, such as Édgar Valdez Villarreal the barbie and Harold Poveda Rabbit. Nothing about Ishmael the may Zambada, his brother Jesus The king Zambada or other allies of the Sinaloa Cartel. The American agents became suspicious.
Shortly thereafter, a DEA source showed Madrigal a video showing Bayardo’s car parked outside one of the houses of The king Zambada, the person in charge of the Sinaloa Cartel giving the bribes to García Luna, according to the testimonies of the cooperating witnesses who have already testified in this trial. At least that’s what they thought. “We informed our bosses that Bayardo was receiving bribes from Rey,” the witness said. The agent shared the information with his superior to pass a report to Bayardo’s superiors, Commissioner Víctor Garay, in the Federal Police. After they identified where El Rey lived, they coordinated efforts to catch him, but he had already escaped. Suspicions of leaks and betrayals grew.
Jesús Zambada was finally arrested in October 2008, in an operation in which the Federal Police had nothing to do with it. When Madrigal shared the information with Bayardo, the conversation was short. “He looked worried,” recalled the agent, currently stationed in Texas. “It seemed strange to me.” The witness said that from this moment he limited the information they shared with their Mexican counterparts and that they began to act “carefully.”
“With the help of the Government, the cartel grew in terms of territory, in the amount of drugs that we moved, and it eliminated its enemies,” Villarreal Barragán said in a Brooklyn court on January 23. El Grande was the first witness to testify in the trial against García Luna. “Usually they put a suitcase on the table, opened the zipper and showed the content,” said the boss about the payments to the former secretary. “He gave us information on operations and investigations against the organization and helped us get rid of commanders and police chiefs in each square,” he added.
Bayardo later became a protected witness in December 2008 in a case of collusion between officials and members of drug trafficking and, specifically, the Sinaloa Cartel. A year later, the commander was assassinated in December 2009 in a Starbucks coffee shop in Benito Juárez, south of Mexico City. According to the chronicles of the murder, the policeman was an informant for the DEA, the Federal Police and the Sinaloa Cartel. He was riddled with bullets by two hit men who got out of a truck. They killed him and seriously injured one of his escorts, as well as a diner.
Madrigal’s testimony continues this afternoon in Brooklyn court, in the last hearing this week. García Luna is accused of drug trafficking, organized crime and making false statements. The portal propublic He had announced on January 22 that the DEA had been investigating the former Mexican official for more than 10 years.
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