Genaro García Luna, the official who for several years led Mexico's fight against the country's violent drug trafficking, was sentenced to more than 38 years in prison in the United States for accepting bribes from the cartels he was supposed to fight.
U.S. District Judge Brian Cogan announced the sentence at a hearing in federal court in Brooklyn on Wednesday.
Prosecutors had sought a life sentence for García Luna, 56, after he was found guilty in a trial in February 2023 for participating in a criminal drug enterprise, participating in various conspiracies and making false statements.
They argued that García Luna accepted millions of dollars in bribes from the Sinaloa cartel, once led by Joaquín Guzmán Loera, better known as El Chapo, and in return protected its members from arrest and protected their cocaine shipments.
In announcing the 460-month sentence, Cogan said García Luna should have “some light at the end of the tunnel,” and credited him for his work teaching fellow inmates at the Brooklyn Metropolitan Detention Center. But the judge said that García Luna lived a “double life,” and that the damage he caused exceeded his good works.
“Apart from your very pleasant demeanor and your eloquence, you have the same kind of thuggishness as El Chapo, it just manifests itself differently,” Cogan said.
García Luna was Secretary of Public Security of Mexico from 2006 to 2012.
His defense attorney, César de Castro, had suggested that Cogan should sentence him to no more than the mandatory minimum of 20 years, noting that he has already spent nearly five years in prison since his 2019 arrest.
The defense had argued at trial that former members of the Sinaloa cartel who cooperated with prosecutors and testified against García Luna had falsely implicated him to try to reduce their own sentences.
Before hearing the sentence, García Luna told the court that the Mexican government and criminal groups had defamed him. “I have not committed any of these crimes,” he said. “I am not the person criminals point to.”
El Chapo is serving a life sentence in a Colorado maximum security prison after being convicted in 2019 on drug charges.
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