Former Mexican anti-drug czar faces life in US prison

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has rejected accusations that his country’s disgraced former security chief, who is being held in the United States and could face life in prison for corruption, has ties to drug cartels.

“It’s very simple,” López Obrador told reporters at his regular morning press conference on Wednesday. “Show the evidence.”

The president denied allegations made in a handwritten letter from Genaro García Luna that was sent by his lawyer to a handful of news outlets, including The Times, on Tuesday. García Luna, a former public security minister who was convicted last year of accepting millions in bribes from leaders of the Sinaloa cartel, alleged that the current Mexican leader has ties to organized crime.

Former Mexican Public Security Minister Genaro García Luna, seen here in 2009, is jailed in the US and faces life in prison for corruption.

(Dario Lopez-Mills/Associated Press)

García Luna, 56, is one of the highest-ranking former Mexican officials ever convicted of corruption in a U.S. court. He offered no evidence to support his allegations but said it was “public knowledge” that López Obrador has ties to “the leaders of the drug trade and their families.”

García Luna’s lawyer, César de Castro, who also provided an English translation of the text, said his client had asked for the statement to be released “given recent events in Mexico and here in the United States.”

García Luna is expected to be sentenced on October 9 in the U.S. District Court in Brooklyn, New York, before the same judge who sentenced Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán to life in prison in 2019. García Luna, who witnesses have said accepted bribes to benefit El Chapo’s cartel while overseeing federal law enforcement operations under then-President Felipe Calderón, could face a similar fate.

López Obrador, 70, whose six-year term ends on October 1, has repeatedly denied receiving campaign funds from drug traffickers.

“In the decades that I have been a leader, I have had to endure many accusations,” the president said, noting that nothing has ever been proven.

He challenged García Luna to provide evidence of corruption, alleging that the former security chief had worked for previous governments that had “spied” on him as a long-time leader of the political opposition.

“He writes that there is evidence, there are videos, conversations, audios,” the president said, referring to allegations in the ex-official’s letter. “It’s very simple, that he makes them public. He has everything.”

The president accuses Calderón of committing electoral fraud to narrowly defeat him in the 2006 presidential race and then presiding over a “narco-state” with García Luna as his corrupt right-hand man.

Calderón has repeatedly denied the allegations.

Meanwhile, President-elect Claudia Sheinbaum, who takes office on October 1, accused the former security chief of engaging in a “political” act aimed at “tarnishing” the reputation of her longtime political patron.

Newly elected President Claudia Sheinbaum, seen at an Independence Day parade this week, accused García Luna of engaging in a “political” act aimed at “smearing” the reputation of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, her political patron.

(Felix Marquez/Associated Press)

“Absolutely untrue,” Sheinbaum said of the allegations. “The president has never been involved in anything that has to do with any criminal.”

Evidence at García Luna’s trial showed that he cooperated closely with U.S. authorities during his years in public office, dating back to the early 2000s, when then-President Vicente Fox put him in charge of a newly formed agency that was Mexico’s equivalent of the FBI. He later rose to a cabinet position under Calderón, and photographs released in connection with his trial show him meeting with top U.S. officials, including then-President Obama.

Then-President Obama greets Genaro García Luna. With them is then-President of Mexico Felipe Calderon.

(USA vs. García Luna defense exhibition.)

Several former high-ranking cartel members, who cooperated in their own cases in exchange for reduced sentences, testified that García Luna and other top Mexican federal police officials were in the pockets of drug lords. García Luna insisted in his letter that investigators had not found “a single peso dollar” in bribes in his bank accounts.

Among the witnesses at the trial was a brother of Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, co-founder of the Sinaloa Cartel. During questioning, he was asked if he was aware of any bribes paid to López Obrador.

Jesús “El Rey’ Zambada denied making direct payments to the current president, but said under further questioning that he had given money to a lawyer to finance López Obrador’s campaign in 2006.

“I remember paying (the lawyer) some money, which he said was intended for the campaign, but not for López Obrador’s payment,” Zambada testified.

El Mayo Zambada, 76, was arrested by U.S. agents in late July, along with El Chapo’s 38-year-old son. Zambada has claimed he was lured to what he thought was a meeting with political leaders in the state of Sinaloa, but was then “forcibly abducted” by Joaquín Guzmán López and flown to a small airport near El Paso.

Jesus “The King” Zambada, right, and other alleged members of the Sinaloa Cartel appear before the media in Mexico City in 2008.

(Alexandre Meneghini / Associated Press)

After leaving office, García Luna moved to the United States and was running a private security company in Miami when he was arrested in December 2019. He alleged that federal prosecutors in New York initially offered him a deal that would allow him to be released after six months and receive “financial benefits” in exchange for his cooperation in other investigations, a deal he refused to accept.

A spokesman for the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office, which handled the prosecution, declined to comment.

McDonnell reported from Mexico City, Hamilton from San Francisco. Special correspondent Cecilia Sánchez Vidal in Mexico City contributed to this report.