By South China Morning Post | Created at 2024-10-17 03:31:43 | Updated at 2024-10-17 05:29:36
2 hours ago
Mexico’s former top security chief was sentenced to more than 38 years behind bars in the US for secretly providing protection to kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman’s brutal Sinaloa cartel while he was supposed to be leading the nation’s war on drugs.
Genaro Garcia Luna, 56, was found guilty by a federal jury in New York last year of six drug-related crimes and taking millions of dollars in bribes from the cartel.
He is one of the highest-ranking Mexican officials to be convicted of corruption by a US court. Prosecutors said he enabled drug traffickers to transport more than one million kilos of cocaine into the US.
“The offence here is so overwhelming,” US District Judge Brian Cogan said while handing down the sentence Wednesday. “Aside from your pleasant demeanour and your articulateness, you have the same kind of thuggishness as El Chapo,” Cogan said. “It just does manifests itself in a different way.”
Garcia Luna served as Mexico’s Minister of Public Security from 2006 to 2012 under former president Felipe Calderon and was tasked with vanquishing drug kingpins.
