Genaro García Luna, the former anti-drug czar of Mexico, is now a former official pending trial for drug trafficking and for accepting bribes from drug traffickers.
Garcia Luna, 51, pleaded Friday not guilty of the charges before the federal district court in Brooklyn. Now he will have to go through a process of summoning witnesses and appearing before prosecutors similar to what the former leader of the Sinaloa Cartel, Joaquín 'El Chapo' Guzmán Loera, lived in the same court a year ago.
It was precisely at the trial of Chapo that one of the witnesses declared under oath that García Luna had personally received bribes from the cartel.
García Luna denied the accusations at that time. But months later, on December 10, the man who was secretary of Public Security between 2006 and 2012 was arrested in Texas for his transfer to New York and charged with "conspiring to traffic" and being paid to protect the Sinaloa Cartel since he was a police leader in 2001.
His lawyer, Juan Pablo Morillo, declared before the hearing on January 3 that García Luna "has all the will to defend himself against the charges and has no intention of reaching an agreement with the US or Mexican government."
For the current complaint, García Luna faces a possible sentence of at least 10 years in prison and maximum life imprisonment.
Even without a possible agreement to disclose what you know in exchange for receiving a minor sentence, in the trial of García Luna, uncomfortable testimonies could come to light.
In the trial against El Chapo, for example, the lawyers of the convicted drug trafficker attempted to have statements about alleged bribes that Guzmán Loera or his relatives of the Sinaloa Cartel allegedly gave to former Mexican presidents.
These were not named, but in recent investigations García Luna has been found to divert resources not only during the government in which he was part of the cabinet, led by Felipe Calderón, but possibly in the subsequent administration of Enrique Peña Nieto.
The judge in that case dismissed the testimonies when considering that they were not relevant for that accusation, but they could well be for the process against García Luna.
The suspicious 'ghost' business of Genaro García Luna
The secrets of the bribes of the Sinaloa Cartel, according to a former member
/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/prisa/72V5ILYZORGNLHVFBL5EFHNU6Q)
/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/prisa/Y4TLPIHNZBC5JEOYMKI7XVZODU.jpg)
/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/prisa/BE7N7LDDAFBTRFB4UPRWHAQSTY.jpg)
