Ex-anti-drugs minister has to go to prison for 38 years

A former Mexican security minister has been sentenced to more than 38 years in prison in New York for his collaboration with the cartel of powerful drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.

The responsible judge sentenced against Genaro García Luna also a fine of two million US dollars (around 1.8 million euros), as the US Department of Justice announced. He is said to have accepted millions in bribes from the Sinaloa Cartel.

The 56-year-old former security minister was between 2006 and 2012 in the government of the then President Felipe Calderon was the highest-ranking official in the fight against the drug cartels. In 2019 he was arrested in the Texas city of Dallas. After around four weeks of trial, a jury found him guilty in February.

Victim of revenge

The public prosecutor’s office had accused García Luna of having committed the crime for more than a decade Cartel drug smuggling to have protected. The defendant’s defense, on the other hand, claimed that Luna had always had integrity and was now becoming so Victim of revenge of the criminals he put behind bars in collaboration with the USA. “El Chapo” was sentenced to life in prison by the same judge in 2019.