The former face of Mexico’s war on drugs has been convicted by a US jury of drug trafficking.
Genaro García Luna, once Mexico’s security minister, was found guilty of taking millions of dollars from Mexico’s biggest crime group, the Sinaloa drug cartel.
García Luna – who was arrested in the state of Texas in 2019 – had pleaded not guilty.
The 54-year-old could face life in prison.
At a minimum, García Luna will serve the mandatory minimum of 20 years, according to a statement from the Department of Justice.
The verdict came after a four-week trial and three days of jury deliberation in the US District Court in Brooklyn, New York.
Prosecutors said the former head of the Mexican equivalent of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation accepted millions of dollars stuffed in briefcases and delivered by members of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán’s Sinaloa drug cartel.
García Luna, who moved to the US after leaving office, is the highest-ranking Mexican official ever to be tried in the US.
On Twitter, a spokesperson for current Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Jesús Ramírez Cuevas, praised the decision and took aim at former Mexican President Felipe Calderón.
García Luna served under Mr Calderón, who oversaw a crackdown on drug cartels beginning in 2006.
“Justice has arrived for the former squire of Felipe Calderón,” Mr Ramirez Cuevas wrote. “The crimes against our people will never be forgotten.”
( Source BBC)
