Mexican ex-drug lord faces life in prison for bribery, US says

Genaro Garcia Luna, who led Mexico’s longtime fight against the country’s violent drug trade, will spend the rest of his life in prison after accepting bribes to protect the cartels he was tasked with fighting, the U.S. Justice Department said Thursday.

Garcia Luna faces sentencing Oct. 9 in Brooklyn federal court before U.S. District Judge Brian Cogan following his February 2023 conviction for engaging in a criminal drug trafficking operation, participating in various conspiracies and making false statements. Prosecutors said Garcia Luna, Mexico’s public security minister from 2006 to 2012, accepted millions of dollars in bribes from the Sinaloa cartel once led by Joaquin Guzman Loera, better known as El Chapo.

In return, he became a “vital ally and member” of the cartel, protecting members from arrest and providing assistance as the cartel shipped more than 1 million kilograms (2.2 million pounds) of cocaine through Mexico to the United States, prosecutors said. “It is difficult to overstate the magnitude of the defendant’s crimes, the deaths and addiction he facilitated, and his betrayal of the people of Mexico and the United States,” U.S. Attorney Breon Peace said in a letter to the judge. “His crimes demand justice.”

Garcia Luna, 56, faces a mandatory minimum sentence of 20 years in prison. His attorney, Cesar de Castro, plans to file his own sentencing recommendation. “Nothing in the government’s arguments surprises me,” de Castro said in an email. “The only surprise was that they filed the brief earlier than required.”

Prosecutors say Garcia Luna essentially lived separate lives, working with U.S. counter-narcotics and intelligence agencies while secretly on the Sinaloa cartel’s payroll. His assistance to the cartel included providing tips about government investigations and rival cartels, prosecutors said.

“The defendant committed these heinous acts while openly branding himself an enemy of drug cartels and an ally of the United States,” Peace wrote. Guzman is serving a life sentence in a maximum-security prison in Colorado after being convicted on drug charges in 2019.

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