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

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

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By Jonathan Stempel

NEW YORK (Reuters) – 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 for accepting bribes to protect the cartels he was tasked with fighting, the U.S. Justice Department said on Thursday.

Garcia Luna is scheduled to appear in court in Brooklyn on October 9 after being convicted in February 2023 of engaging in a criminal drug trafficking operation, participating in various conspiracies and making false statements.

Prosecutors say 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 helping transport more than 1 million kilograms 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 addictions he has facilitated, and his betrayal of the people of Mexico and the United States,” U.S. Attorney Breon Peace wrote 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 administration’s arguments surprises me,” de Castro said in an email. “The only surprise was that they submitted the letter earlier than required.”

Prosecutors say Garcia Luna led essentially separate lives: He worked for U.S. drug enforcement and intelligence agencies but was secretly on the payroll of the Sinaloa cartel.

Prosecutors allege that he assisted the cartel by, among other things, providing tips about government investigations and about competing cartels.

“The defendant committed these heinous acts while portraying himself as 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.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)