NEW YORK (AP) — A former Mexican presidential cabinet member was convicted in the U.S. on Tuesday of taking massive bribes to protect the violent drug cartels he was tasked with combating.
Under tight security, an anonymous New York federal court jury deliberated three days before reaching a verdict in the drug trafficking case against former Public Security Secretary Genaro García Luna.
He is the highest-ranking current or former Mexican official ever to be tried in the United States.
García Luna, who denied the allegations, headed Mexico's federal police and then was its top public safety official from 2006 to 2012. His lawyers said the charges were based on lies from criminals who wanted to punish his drug-fighting efforts and to get sentencing breaks for themselves by helping prosecutors.
He showed no apparent reaction on hearing the verdict.
The case had political ramifications on both sides of the border. Testimony aired a secondhand claim that former Mexican President Felipe Calderón sought to shield notorious Sinaloa cocaine cartel kingpin Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán against a major rival; Calderón called the allegation "absurd" and "an absolute lie."
Jurors also learned that García Luna met with high-level U.S. politicians and other officials, who considered him a key cartel-fighting partner as Washington embarked on a $1.6 billion push to beef up Mexican law enforcement and stem the flow of drugs.
The Americans weren't accused of wrongdoing, and although suspicions long swirled around García Luna, the trial didn't delve into the extent of U.S. officials' knowledge about them before his 2019 arrest. Current Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has, however, pointedly suggested that Washington investigate its own law enforcement and intelligence officials who worked with García Luna during Calderón's administration.
A roster of ex-smugglers and former Mexican officials testified that García Luna took millions of dollars in cartel cash, met with major traffickers and kept law enforcement at bay.
He was "the best investment they had," said Sergio "El Grande" Villarreal Barragan, a former federal police officer who worked for cartels on the side and later as his main job. "We had absolutely no problems with our activities."
He and other witnesses said that on García Luna's watch, police tipped traffickers about upcoming raids, ensured that cocaine could pass freely through the country, colluded with cartels to raid rivals, and did other favors. One ex-smuggler said García Luna shared a document that reflected U.S. law enforcement's information about a huge cocaine shipment that was seized in Mexico around 2007.
García Luna, 54, didn't testify at the trial, though his wife took the stand in an apparent effort to portray their assets in Mexico as legitimately acquired and upper-middle-class, but not lavish. The couple moved to Miami in 2012, when the Mexican administration changed and he became a consultant on security issues.
García Luna's lawyers emphasized that prosecutors' case relied on testimony from admitted lawbreakers, without recordings, messages or a documented money trail to corroborate them.
"Nothing backs up what these killers, torturers, fraudsters, and epic narcotics traffickers claimed about Genaro García Luna," defense lawyer César de Castro said in a closing argument.
García Luna was convicted on charges that include engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise, which carries a potential sentencing range of 20 years to life in prison; he also was convicted of other charges, including cocaine distribution and cocaine conspiracy. His sentencing is set for June 27.
The trial was peppered with glimpses of such narco-extravagances as a private zoo with a lion, a hippo, white tigers and more. Jurors heard about tons of cocaine moving through Latin America in shipping containers, go-fast boats, private jets, planes, trains and even submarines.
And there were horrific reminders of the extraordinary violence those drugs fueled.
Witnesses described cartel killings and kidnappings, allegedly including an abduction of García Luna himself. There was testimony about police officers being slaughtered and drug-world rivals being dismembered, skinned and dangled from bridges as cartel factions fought each other while buying police protection.
Witnesses described delivering García Luna to meetings with cartel leaders in settings ranging from a country house to a car wash and collecting boxes and bags full of drug money at safe houses, a warehouse full of cocaine and a fancy Mexico City restaurant.
One ex-smuggler, Óscar "El Lobo" Nava Valencia, said he personally heard García Luna and a then-top police official say they would "stand with us" during a meeting with Guzman's associates amid a cartel civil war. That sit-down alone cost the drug gang $3 million, Nava Valencia said.
García Luna was arrested after testimony about his alleged graft emerged at Guzman's high-profile trial about four years ago in the same New York courtroom.
The former lawman also faces various Mexican arrest warrants and charges relating to government technology contracts, prison contracting and the bungled U.S. "Fast and Furious" investigation into suspicions that guns were illegally making their way from the U.S. to Mexican drug cartels. The Mexican government has also filed a civil suit against García Luna and his alleged associates and businesses in Florida, seeking to recover $700 million that Mexico claims he garnered through corruption.
López Obrador has given updates on the New York trial at his daily press conferences, calling García Luna corrupt but noting that it was up to the jury to decide whether he was guilty.
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Associated Press writer María Verza contributed from Mexico City.
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