Genaro García Luna, the man who was supposed to lead the civil strategy against drug traffickers during Felipe Calderón’s six-year term, escaped life imprisonment in the United States when he was sentenced this Wednesday to just over 38 years in prison for accepting bribes from the cartels that I had to fight.
Judge Brian Cogan, in his final speech in which he read the sentence, accused him of having led a double life, “combining his role in a beloved family with another as a facilitator of a large criminal enterprise” at the service of the Sinaloa Cartel.
He is the highest Mexican official convicted so far in the United States, and his case joins that of other leaders, such as former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández, sentenced last June to 45 years in prison, also for drug trafficking crimes.
Prosecutors had sought a life sentence for Genaro García Luna, 56, after being convicted in February 2023 of participating in a criminal drug scheme, taking part in several conspiracies and making false statements.
The former Secretary of Public Security was born on July 10, 1968 in Mexico City. He is a Mechanical Engineer from the Metropolitan Autonomous University and graduated in 1994.
Read: Genaro García Luna is sentenced to just over 38 years in prison in the US
At the defunct National Research and Security Center (CISEN) he specialized in Training and Specialization in Public Security; He also has a diploma in Public Administration, Academic Discipline and Strategic Planning from the UNAM Faculty of Accounting.
He began working in that intelligence center at the end of the 1980s and after 10 years, he joined the Federal Preventive Police created in 1999, where he served as Intelligence coordinator. A year later, he was appointed director of Planning and Operation of the then Federal Judicial Police.
In 2001, then-president Vicente Fox ordered the creation of the now defunct Federal Investigation Agency and appointed García Luna as its head.
Read: García Luna asks for clemency in a new letter; tomorrow I could receive a life sentence
With the arrival of Felipe Calderón in 2006, García Luna was named head of the Ministry of Public Security and was in charge of the National Security Strategy, which led, in 2009, to the creation of the now defunct Federal Police.
He was accused of diverting resources, money laundering and also of having allowed the unpunished operation of drug trafficking to the United States in exchange for millionaire bribes from the Sinaloa Cartel.
On December 10, 2019, Genaro García Luna was arrested in Dallas, Texas, and two weeks later it was announced that in Mexico he was being investigated for bribery and for the ‘Fast and Furious’ operation.
On January 3, 2020, he appeared before Judge Brian Cogan and pleaded not guilty to the crimes with which he was charged.
Read: Sheinbaum accuses García Luna of being a cynic after letter asking US judge for clemency
In addition, former US and Mexican officials also testified against him, including Héctor Villarreal Fernández, Secretary of Finance of Coahuila, and Edgar Veytia ‘El Diablo’, former Nayarit prosecutor convicted in the United States for drug trafficking.
On February 21, 2023, Genaro García Luna was found guilty of the charges against him in the United States, and since then the sentence that was announced this Wednesday was postponed on several occasions.
With information from EFE
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