Mexico’s ex-security chief jailed for 38 years in US for taking cartel bribes

The man once heralded as the architect of Mexico’s war on drug cartels has been sentenced to more than 38 years in a US prison for taking massive bribes to aid drug traffickers.

Genaro Garcia Luna, Mexico’s former secretary of public security, was convicted by a New York jury in 2023 of taking millions of dollars in bribes to protect the violent Sinaloa cartel that he was supposedly combating.

He is the highest-level Mexican government official to be convicted in the US.

At his sentencing hearing before a federal judge in Brooklyn on Wednesday, Garcia Luna continued to maintain his innocence and said the case against him was based on false information from criminals and the Mexican government.

“I have a firm respect for the law,” he said in Spanish. “I have not committed these crimes.”

Garcia Luna, 56, led Mexico’s federal police before he served in a cabinet-level position as the top security official from 2006 to 2012 under then-president Felipe Calderon.

At the time, Garcia Luna was hailed as an ally by the US in its fight on drug trafficking.

But US prosecutors said that in return for millions of dollars, he provided intelligence about investigations against the cartel, information about rival gangs and the safe passage of massive quantities of drugs.

After the sentencing, Mr Calderon said on X, formerly Twitter, that he respected the court’s decision but he never had “verifiable evidence” of Garcia Luna’s criminal activities.

Mr Calderon said taking on the cartels “was one of the most difficult decisions of my life. But I would do it again, because it is the right thing to do”.

US district judge Brian Cogan said he was not moved by past accolades that Garcia Luna received for his work in the war on drugs.

“That was your cover,” the judge said before imposing the sentence.

“You are guilty of these crimes, sir. You can’t parade these words and say, ‘I’m police officer of the year’.”

Together with the sentence of 38 years and four months, the judge imposed a two million US dollars fine.

During the trial, photos were shown of Garcia Luna shaking hands with former US president Barack Obama and speaking with former secretary of state Hillary Clinton and former senator John McCain.

But prosecutors said Garcia Luna secretly advanced a drug-trafficking conspiracy that resulted in the deaths of thousands of American and Mexican citizens.

He ensured that drug traffickers were notified in advance of raids and sabotaged legitimate police operations aimed at apprehending cartel leaders, they said.

Drug traffickers were able to ship more than one million kilograms of cocaine through Mexico and into the US using planes, trains, trucks and submarines while Garcia Luna held his posts, prosecutors said.

During former Sinaloa kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman’s trial in the same court in 2018, a former cartel member testified that he personally delivered at least six million dollars in payoffs to Garcia Luna and that cartel members agreed to pool up to 50 million dollars to pay for his protection.

“He enabled the cartel. He protected the cartel. He was the cartel,” assistant US attorney Saritha Komatireddy told the judge on Wednesday.

Garcia Luna enabled a corrupt system that allowed violent cartels to thrive and distribute drugs that killed multitudes of people, she added.

“It may not have been the defendant pulling the trigger, but he has blood on his hands,” Ms Komatireddy said.

Garcia Luna’s lawyer, Cesar de Castro, said the defence intended to appeal the sentence.