Genaro García Luna is sentenced to 38 years in prison for drug trafficking and organized crime
Felipe Calderón’s former drug czar, convicted of collaborating for two decades with the Sinaloa Cartel, learned his fate in the same court and before the same judge who convicted El Chapo
Thirty-eight years in prison. That is the sentence that the United States imposed this Wednesday on Genaro García Luna, former drug czar and Public Security Secretary under former president Felipe Calderón. The 56-year-old former official, once considered one of the most powerful and feared men in Mexico, learned his fate in the Eastern District Court of New York — in the same court and before the same judge who convicted Joaquín El Chapo Guzmán in October 2019 — for receiving million-dollar bribes and collaborating for more than two decades with the Sinaloa Cartel. García Luna has been the highest-ranking Mexican politician to ever set foot in a U.S. court. He will also be the first high-ranking official to serve a sentence in a U.S. prison. The judge has also imposed a fine of two million dollars.
After a five-week trial in February of last year, the jury’s verdict was unanimous. García Luna was convicted of five felonies in the Brooklyn court: three for conspiracy to traffic cocaine, one more for participating in an ongoing criminal enterprise and another for giving false statements to authorities. The sentencing, originally scheduled for June of last year, was delayed at least five times due to requests by his lawyers for a retrial. Judge Brian Cogan rejected the request last month after prosecutors uncovered that the former secretary offered bribes of up to $2 million to other inmates to testify on his behalf.
Once again, Cogan did not hesitate and issued a historic sentence for Mexico. García Luna’s legal team, led by César de Castro, defended his client’s innocence and announced that he will appeal the conviction. The Mexican president, Claudia Sheinbaum, called the ex-official “cynical,” after he sent a letter to the judge in which he asked for clemency once more, accused the Mexican government of fabricating “false information” and criticized the judicial reform promoted by former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Sheinbaum also lashed out at Calderón and challenged him to make a statement on the case. “We want to see what he says,” she said in her morning conference.
After the ex-secretary, it will be Ismael El Mayo Zambada, co-founder and kingpin among kingpins of the Sinaloa Cartel, who will sit in the dock in New York this week, once again in Judge Cogan’s court. Following the fall of El Chapo and García Luna, the trial against Zambada, captured in late July, is shaping up to be the next judicial thriller starring Mexico’s drug lords in the United States.
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