Mexico’s former top security official convicted in federal corruption trial in Brooklyn

NEW YORK — Mexico’s former top cop used the police force he commanded to help a drug cartel do business, a federal jury in Brooklyn found Tuesday.

At a four-week trial in Brooklyn federal court, prosecutors accused Genaro Garcia Luna, 54, Mexico’s former secretary of public security, of taking millions of dollars in bribes from the notorious Sinaloa cartel — working for drug lord Arturo Beltran Leyva and then his cousin, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, who took over the cartel in a bloody civil war in the late 2000s.

Garcia Luna faces a minimum of 20 years in prison, and could be incarcerated for life.

Guzman was convicted and sentenced to life plus 30 years in 2019.

The government’s case hinged on the word of several cooperating witnesses, including Sergio Villarreal Barragan, a former Mexican federal police officer nicknamed "El Grande," who became Beltran Leyva’s right-hand man; and cartel bigwig Oscar Nava-Valencia, or “El Lobo.”

“I’m not asking you to like them. These people have done some horrible things. They’re criminals. But it takes one to know one,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Saritha Komatireddy said in her closing argument Sunday.

But Garcia Luna’s lawyer, Cesar de Castro, argued that aside from the testimony, prosecutors provided no other evidence — no recordings, no financial records, no physical proof — that his client was on the take.

“The government’s lack of evidence is shocking. They’re asking you to condemn a man solely on the words of some of the most notorious and ruthless criminals this world has ever seen,” he said. “Nothing backs up what these killers, torturers, fraudsters and epic narcotics traffickers claimed about Genaro Garcia Luna.”

But the witness testimony convinced the jury.

The witnesses described the cartel’s brazen, often brutally violent actions to seize power, kill rivals, and move massive quantities of drugs, with Garcia Luna as a participant — attending meetings with cartel leaders, alerting the cartel to law enforcement raids, and taking regular bribes.

The cartel’s leaders lived in absurd luxury — buying mansions, cars, gold and diamond guns, and keeping white tigers, black panthers and exotic wildlife as pets.

“That’s what it looks like when drug dealers have protection. They are flashy. They are rich. They have white tigers and a hippopotamus,” Komatireddy said. “And everybody knows where they are and nobody arrests anyone. That’s because the defendant was getting paid to protect them.

Garcia Luna headed Mexico’s Federal Investigation Agency, or AFI, from 2001 to 2006, prior to taking the secretary of public security job from 2006 to 2012. Barragan testified that the AFI’s support was crucial in Sinaloa’s clashes with the rival Gulf Cartel, providing members with AFI uniforms and equipment, and “cloned” police SUVs.

Actual AFI agents would set up perimeters when Sinaloa members battled with its rivals, turning away local and regional police who may be working for the opposing cartel, Barragan said.

And in one particularly dramatic episode from 2007, Beltran Leyva and his cronies gave Garcia Luna $5 million to try to prevent authorities from seizing a 23-ton shipment of cocaine from Colombia at the Port of Manzanillo, Nava-Valencia testified.

That proved to be too heavy a lift for Garcia Luna, he testified — the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and the Mexico’s Marines were working together, and there was no stopping what was described as the largest seizure of cocaine in history. The cartel’s Colombian business partner’s weren’t happy, and wanted Beltran Leyva to pony up $50 million to cover the lost drugs, Nava-Valenica said.

Still, a month after a sit-down with Beltran Leyva, Garcia Luna proved his worth to the cartel — he delivered an intelligence report showing that the U.S. got its information about the drug shipment, and that took Sinaloa off the hook, Nava-Valenica testified.

“We would have had to be responsible for about $50 million for the Colombians’ losses,” he said. “We saved that amount of money, $50 million. If not, we would have had to pay it.”

Garcia Luna’s lawyers portrayed Nava-Valencia as a ruthless mass murderer who personally ordered tortures and the killings of more than a hundred people.

“Yes, I did. I did make some bad decisions in my life, yes,” Nava-Valencia said, describing the murders during his cross-examination.

“El Grande” Barragan, who carried a diamond-encrusted gun and toted a grenade launcher, testified he was present for a horrific execution where Beltran Leyva shredded two women with an AK-47 for insulting his wife, then ordered the bodies disappeared.

“Now let’s take a look at their sentences. El Grande got 10 years. Where is he today?” de Castro said, rattling through the sentences the cooperators got for their crimes. “Oscar Nava-Valencia, ‘El Lobo’ — he got 16 and a half years. He’s trying to reduce it even more with the help of these prosecutors.

“When you’ve disappeared countless people so that no one can find them, properly bury them, mourn them, grieve them, what is so hard about lying about Mr. Garcia Luna?” de Castro said.

But Komatireddy dismissed the defense argument that the cooperators were testifying to get revenge on Garcia Luna for getting them locked up.

“This is not a group of gang members sitting in a jail cell making up a story about the cop who investigated them. These are people from all walks of life, from different places, from different backgrounds, from different perspectives,” the prosecutor said. “Some of them went to war with each other. ... What they told you all leads to the same conclusion, that the defendant took millions of dollars in bribes.”

Judge Brian Cogan set sentencing for June.

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