NEW YORK (Reuters) – Closing arguments are set to begin on Wednesday in the U.S. trial of a former senior Mexican law enforcement official once in charge of the battle against drug trafficking, who stands accused of taking bribes from the powerful Sinaloa cartel.
Genaro Garcia Luna led Mexico’s Federal Investigation Agency from 2001 to 2005 and was public security minister from 2006 to 2012, during which time he worked closely with U.S. counter-narcotics and intelligence agencies as part of former president Felipe Calderon’s crackdown on cartels.
He pleaded not guilty to U.S. charges that he accepted millions of dollars to protect the cartel once run by imprisoned drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman in exchange for protection. He is one of the highest-ranking Mexican officials to be accused of aiding drug trafficking groups.
During the month-long trial in Brooklyn federal court, jurors heard testimony from imprisoned cartel members who are cooperating with prosecutors, as well as from U.S. and Mexican law enforcement officials.
Garcia Luna’s lawyers argued the traffickers implicated him because they were out for revenge and because they were seeking lower sentences.
Among the witnesses was Edgar Veytia, a former attorney general in Mexico’s Nayarit state. Veytia testified that in 2011, after he resisted a bribe offer from an associate of El Chapo, the associate told him that Garcia Luna was on their side and had accepted millions of dollars.
“He told me that he had arranged this situation on the federal level,” Veytia said on the stand on Feb. 7. Veytia was sentenced in 2019 to 20 years in prison after pleading guilty to a U.S. narcotics conspiracy charge.
Florian Miedel, a defense lawyer, asked Veytia why he never mentioned Garcia Luna’s name to U.S. investigators before he was sentenced.
Guzman was sentenced to life in prison in 2019 following his conviction in Brooklyn on drug trafficking and murder conspiracy charges. He is held at a high-security “Supermax” prison in Colorado.
(Reporting by Luc Cohen in New York; Editing by Noeleen Walder and David Holmes)
