NewsUSAThe US affirms that Garcia Luna continued to collaborate with the Sinaloa cartel from prison

The US affirms that Garcia Luna continued to collaborate with the Sinaloa cartel from prison

The former Secretary of Public Security of Mexico, Genaro Garcia Luna, at a court hearing in February 2020, in Brooklyn (New York).JANE ROSENBERG (Reuters)

Genaro Garcia Luna has collaborated with the Sinaloa cartel for almost 20 years, even after he was arrested in the United States in 2019. This has been stated by the District Attorney for the Eastern District of New York in a letter sent to the court to advance the court case against the former Secretary of Security and head of the Mexican Police. Garcia Luna’s lawyers have assured that the accusation against their client is fragile because he abandoned public life at the end of the Felipe Calderon government (2006-2012) and have asked that the charges against him be dismissed on the grounds that they have already prescribed.

The future of the case against Garcia Luna depends on the dispute between both parties regarding how long the former police chief’s alleged ties with the most influential criminal group in recent decades have lasted. The Prosecutor’s Office maintains that the former official began working for Joaquin’s organization El Chapo Guzman since he became director of the Criminal Investigation Agency during the Vicente Fox Administration, in January 2001, and that those ties have been maintained until July 2020. “The accused conspired with members of the Sinaloa cartel, by accepting bribes and help them in their drug trafficking activities,” reads the latest document filed with the court.

Prosecutors have claimed that examples abound of how Garcia Luna facilitated criminal activities and remained a top-level contact for the cartel. They have pointed out, for example, that the architect of the drug war did not interfere in the shipment of multi-ton shipments of narcotics from Sinaloa to the United States and that he leaked sensitive information about police operations to prevent his leaders from were captured. The former official, on the other hand, focused on persecuting rival capos and placed corrupt public servants in positions of power in areas that were controlled by the criminal organization, the document ensures.

The US authorities have assured that they have 15 witnesses with experience in security tasks and six other potential testimonies from collaborating witnesses to support their accusations. Prosecutors have shown part of their letters in response to claims by Garcia Luna’s lawyers that they have not been provided with all the evidence against him in order to build an effective defense. “These materials, which include hundreds of meeting notes with potential collaborating witnesses, contain relevant information about the Sinaloa cartel, its members, its methods of operations, including its extensive use of bribery,” they said. The information collected, says the Prosecutor’s Office, details how many bribes he received, what he did in exchange for that money and what other public servants are affected by the corrupt scheme. The authorities affirmed that Garcia Luna received several million dollars from drug trafficking.

Garcia Luna asks that four charges against him related to cocaine trafficking and his membership in drug trafficking organizations be dropped. His lawyers say that the accusations are based on the hypothesis that he took advantage of his position in the Government of Fox and Calderon, but they assure that they fall apart if it is considered that his client has not held any relevant position in the Administrations that came . “It is evident that by retiring from public life and leaving Mexico in 2012, Mr. Garcia Luna withdrew from any alleged conspiracy,” the defense states.

The defense points out that the key point is that the crimes claimed prescribe after five years and that the former official was only charged until 2019, after his arrest in Dallas, seven years after his retirement from politics. “Given the prominence of his position, it is obvious that the members of the Sinaloa cartel who allegedly benefited from the powerful position held by Mr. Garcia Luna understood that those benefits ended with his resignation,” reads a brief filed by the lawyers.

The basis of the Prosecutor’s Office to say that Garcia Luna continued to collaborate with the cartel is that he lied in an immigration declaration presented in 2018 in which he assured that he had not committed any crime and a recording from mid-2020 with a false hitman from the Russian mafia which has been presented as evidence that he tried to get rid of key witnesses in the case. In the audio, Garcia Luna allegedly speaks with a cellmate who spied on him at the request of the Prosecutor’s Office about how to “kill the families” of those who collaborate with the authorities.

Garcia Luna’s lawyers have until next Wednesday to present a counterargument. It is also possible that Judge Brian Cogan, the same one who sentenced El Chapo to life in prison in 2019, will order a hearing in mid-November to define whether or not the request to dismiss the case proceeds. Last August, after multiple extensions and unless an agreement is reached between both parties, Cogan set the start for January of next year.

here to newsletter of EL PAIS Mexico and receive all the informative keys of the news of this country

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here

Latest Posts

Read More
More