New York

Genaro Garcia Luna, a former top security official who was given the responsibility to dismantle the drug cartels in Mexico, was sentenced to more than 38 years in a US prison on Wednesday for instead enabling them. The sentence was announced by the US district judge Brian Cogan at a hearing in Brooklyn federal court.

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Garcia Luna was Mexico’s public security minister from 2006 to 2012.

The 56-year-old was convicted in New York last year for taking millions of dollars in bribes to let the Sinaloa Cartel smuggle cocaine. He was found guilty of five criminal counts in February 2023, including engaging in a criminal drug enterprise, taking part in various conspiracies and making false statements.

The Sinaloa cartel was once led by Joaquin Guzman Loera, better known as El Chapo. Prosecutors, representing the US Justice Department, accused him of using his office to protect Mexico’s notorious Sinaloa cartel. Garcia took money from the cartel in exchange for shielding its members from arrest and protecting its cocaine shipments.

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“Today’s sentencing of Genaro Garcia Luna is a critical step in upholding justice and the rule of law,” United States Attorney Breon Peace said in a press release.

Judge Cogan credited him for teaching fellow inmates at Brooklyn’s metropolitan detention centre, but stated he lived a "double life" and the harm he caused outweighed his good deeds.

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“Aside from your very pleasant demeanour and your articulateness, you have the same kind of thuggishness as El Chapo, it just manifests itself differently,” Cogan said.

Garcia Luna alleges smear campaign

Prosecutors had urged a life sentence for him, but his defence lawyers suggested that he should not be given a longer sentence than the mandatory minimum of 20 years since he has already spent nearly five years in jail after being arrested in 2019.

They further argued that the former Sinaloa cartel members who testified against Garcia Luna falsely implicated him so that they could get their own sentences reduced.

Meanwhile, before being told about the sentence, Garcia Luna said in court that he "did not commit any of these crimes" and that Mexico's government and criminal groups had smeared him. 

Notorious drug dealer El Chapo is currently at a Colorado maximum security prison where he is serving a life sentence.