The person who was as soon as Mexico's prime safety official and in command of combating the drug cartels goes on trial Tuesday on costs he accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes in change for serving to the highly effective Sinaloa Cartel transfer medication and its members keep away from seize.
Genaro García Luna was finest referred to as the mumbling, tough-looking former safety secretary beneath ex-President Felipe Calderón who spearheaded the bloody struggle on cartels between 2006 and 2012.
U.S. prosecutors allege he was so brazen he accepted tens of hundreds of thousands of dollars, usually stuffed in briefcases. The proof towards him consists of pay stubs, although whether or not they have been from official jobs, non-public sector consultancy, cartel funds or different bribes is unclear.
They are saying he continued to reside off his ill-gotten proceeds even after he moved to the U.S., the place he was arrested in 2019, although the protection says he was a official businessman. Jury choice was scheduled to start Tuesday.
In the long run, the case may reveal the interior workings of how Mexican cartels have been capable of function so overtly for thus lengthy: by bribing Mexican police and army proper as much as the highest ranks.
"For many years, Mexico's political elite, of all events, has sought by any means to have safety ministers, generals, police commanders, inside secretaries and high-ranking officers tried and imprisoned in Mexico … all that to keep away from them giving info on the ties between the drug cartels and politicians," mentioned Mexican safety analyst David Saucedo. "Garcia Luna's trial in the US breaks with that sample."
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has welcomed the trial anticipated to forged mild on corruption within the administration of Calderón, who the president accuses of getting robbed him of the presidency in 2006.
However López Obrador himself fought tooth and nail to keep away from a U.S. trial of former protection secretary Gen. Salvador Cienfuegos on comparable costs in 2020, at one level threatening to kick DEA brokers out of Mexico except the final was returned, which he was.
The trial begins simply days after U.S. President Joe Biden met with López Obrador in Mexico Metropolis. The 2 governments pledged continued cooperation towards the drug cartels, particularly towards the scourge of the artificial opioid fentanyl, which contributed to greater than 107,000 drug overdose deaths within the U.S. in 2021. López Obrador scrapped the civilian federal police power that García Luna as soon as led and put the army in command of a lot of the nation's safety.
"It isn't the identical to place a civilian PAN official on trial, as it's to place a protection secretary on trial, when your complete nationwide safety coverage rests on the armed forces," mentioned Ana Vanessa Cárdenas, a world safety analyst on the Anahuac College, referring to Calderón's conservative Nationwide Motion Social gathering.
García Luna has pleaded not responsible to drug trafficking costs and allegations of defending and persevering with a legal enterprise. He may face many years in jail if convicted.
What he'll face in a Brooklyn courtroom is a parade of presidency witnesses, together with high-level cartel members, of a form not seen in Brooklyn since Sinaloa boss Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán was convicted there in 2019 and sentenced to life in jail. Some accusations towards García Luna surfaced on the Guzmán trial.
"Whereas holding public workplace, (García Luna) used his official positions to help the Sinaloa Cartel, a infamous Mexican drug cartel, in change for multimillion-dollar bribes. At trial, the federal government expects that quite a few witnesses, together with a number of former high-ranking members of the Sinaloa Cartel, will testify about bribes paid to the defendant in change for defense," U.S. Lawyer Breon Peace wrote in a court docket submitting final week.
"In change for these bribes, the defendant offered the Sinaloa Cartel with, amongst different issues, secure passage for its drug shipments, delicate regulation enforcement details about investigations into the cartel, and details about rival drug cartels," Peace wrote. "These funds allowed the cartel at occasions to obtain warnings prematurely of regulation enforcement efforts to apprehend cartel members and to permit cartel members to be launched if arrested."
Earlier than convicting Guzmán in 2019, jurors in his New York trial heard former cartel member Jesús Zambada testify that he personally made at the very least $6 million in hidden funds to García Luna, on behalf of his older brother, cartel boss Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada.
The cartel is now believed to be run by Zambada and at the very least three of Guzmán's sons, one in all whom was arrested earlier this month on an extradition request from the US.
García Luna is not the primary prime Mexican official arrested for involvement with drug traffickers. Gen. Jesús Gutiérrez Rebollo was made Mexico's drug czar by President Ernesto Zedillo in 1996. He was arrested the next yr after it was found he was dwelling in a luxurious condo owned by the chief of the Juarez cartel, Amado Carrillo Fuentes.