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Genaro García Luna, once Mexico’s security minister with close ties to the DEA and US government, was found guilty of taking millions of dollars in bribes from Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel while supposedly working to break up Mexico’s violent drug gangs. García Luna, who served as Mexico’s equivalent of the FBI director from 2006 to 2012, is the highest-ranking Mexican official ever to be tried in the U.S.
With García Luna’s help, the Sinaloa Cartel smuggled more than 50 tons of cocaine into the U.S. between 2002 and 2007. Between 2002 and 2008 another 53 tons of cocaine were smuggled to New York and Chicago, according to the criminal indictment.
Tuesday’s verdict came after a month-long trial in the US District Court in Brooklyn where the jury learned that García Luna had taken millions in bribes from Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán’s drug cartel over the course of years. It was during El Chapo’s 2019 trial, which took place in the same Brooklyn courtroom, that revelations came out that García Luna had simultaneously worked for both the cartel and the DEA. As Mexico’s architect of the ‘war on drugs’ from 2001 to 2012, Genaro García Luna was the DEA’s closest ally in Mexico.
“It is unconscionable that the defendant betrayed his duty as Secretary of Public Security by greedily accepting millions of dollars in bribe money that was stained by the blood of Cartel wars and drug-related battles in the streets of the United States and Mexico, in exchange for protecting those murderers and traffickers he was solemnly sworn to investigate,” said Breon Peace, US Attorney for the Eastern District of New York
A spokesperson for current Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, praised the outcome of the trial while taking aim at former the Mexican Pres. Calderón under whom García Luna worked. “Justice has arrived for the former squire of Felipe Calderón. The crimes against our people will never be forgotten.”
García Luna will be sentenced on June 27. He faces a mandatory minimum sentence of 20 years in prison and a maximum of life behind bars.
Photo: Mexican government, Genaro García Luna’s term as security minister.
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Image and article originally from www.benzinga.com. Read the original article here.