Sergio
El Grande
Villarreal Barragán appeared this Monday before a federal court in New York as the first witness against Genaro García Luna, the highest-ranking former official to face US justice and directly accused him of receiving drug money to help to grow into one of the bloodiest criminal organizations in Mexico: the Sinaloa cartel, of the Beltrán Leyva.
“The payments grew as the cartel grew.
Without those payments it would have been impossible [to grow],” Villarreal Barragán said when giving his testimony in the trial against the former secretary, who is accused of conspiring to aid drug trafficking and faces a maximum sentence of life in prison if found guilty.
But he gave details of an alleged relationship that was not only commercial: he spoke of a special gift,
"a collectible Harley Davidson motorcycle"
, that Arturo Beltrán Leyva himself, leader of the cartel, would have given García Luna, and assured that he listened to both “talking as friends”.
'El Grande' points out the area in which the Sinaloa cartel operated before the jury on a map of Mexico.Jane Rosenburg
The former member of the Sinaloa cartel is part of a long list of dozens of witnesses, among which there are more drug lords and also ex-government.
García Luna has denied having enriched himself from drug trafficking, while his defense has assured that there is no evidence against him and that the trial is a "revenge" orchestrated by the cartels with the support of the United States.
El Grande
is a protected witness
and longtime collaborator of the US Government, and has never been in jail.
When Iván Reyes Arzate, alias
La Reina
,
was sentenced, El Grande
declared that Genaro García Luna had received money from the drug trafficker.
Before the court in New York, he gave details on Monday of how this connection worked, without presenting evidence for the moment to support his story.
The organization
of Arturo Beltrán Leyva, he assured, paid bribes to
García Luna during the 2000s, when he was an official in the Government of Felipe Calderón Hinojosa and one of the alleged architects of a bloody fight against drug trafficking.
“The payments were a big help because we were able to grow and minimize our rivals,” he explained.
According to
El Grande
, the payments to García Luna and other AFI directors
came from a "cock",
a collection made by Arturo Beltrán, and other leaders and drug lords, including Joaquín
el Chapo
Guzmán.
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The more benefits, the more you paid.
The money was allegedly delivered by Arturo Beltrán Leyva, one of the founders and the leader of the criminal organization that produced, transported and sold cocaine, marijuana, heroin and methamphetamine, accused of brutal murders.
"When I joined (the Beltrán Leyva cartel in 2001) he was already paid and he was paid until the last day that Arturo Beltrán lived (in December 2009)," he said.
El Grande
estimates that he was in
about 20 meetings
in which Arturo Beltrán Leyva paid García Luna.
The first meeting he witnessed was in a town house south of Mexico City and was attended by other drug leaders and a government official.
A gift motorcycle between "friends"
When asked how he would qualify the role that García Luna played, he said “very important”.
“The cartel grew in territories and amounts of drugs that we could bring into Mexico and eliminate rival groups,” he said.
El Grande
said that Arturo Beltrán Leyva gave García Luna a "collection Harley Davidson motorcycle."
Beltrán Leyva sent it to him through his brother-in-law, Carlos.
He "sent it to give it to García Luna."
And he even assures that the former secretary spoke about the gift with the drug lord
"thanking him for the detail... that it was very pretty
. "
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The former cartel member said he was struck by the "familiarity" with which they "talked as friends."
García Luna, he said, had some problems communicating, and on some occasions, Beltrán Leyva and other drug lords called him "the stutterer."
Sergio Enrique Villarreal, alias 'El Grande', of the Beltrán Leyva cartel, one of the most wanted men in Mexico, is presented to the press at the headquarters of the Mexican Navy in Mexico City, on September 13, 2010. ALFREDO ESTRELLA / AFP via Getty Images
El Grande
said that
García Luna's work would basically consist of three aspects
: providing information on operations and investigations against the organization, facilitating the assignment of positions to cartel members and giving them information about their rivals, in order to finish them off.
El Grande
also recounted that on one occasion, in Chiapas, between 2003 and 2004, Arturo Beltrán Leyva would have commissioned him to intercept a shipment of cocaine from the Gulf cartel, and that when he did and took it to a warehouse, García Luna was there. to review the content.
At the opening of the arguments against García Luna, prosecutor Philip Nathan Pilmar accused the former official of taking money from the cartels," he said, "and betraying his oath to his country."
For his part, the defense lawyer, César de de Castro,
assured that there is no evidence and that the witnesses called
are part of those who fell with the work of García Luna.
"What better revenge than to bury the man who led the war against the cartels," he said.
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El Grande assured that he started working for the federal Judicial Police in Ciudad Juárez in the early 1990s, and at that time he joined the Juárez Cartel, for Amado Carrillo until he retired from the police in 1997 when General Álvarez arrived. Nara and began to investigate the policemen who were working with the narco.
Arturo Beltrán Leyva then recruited him, he said, to design operations to attack his enemies from the Gulf cartel (Osiel Cárdenas).
From that moment, they had already purchased from the Federal Investigation Agency (AFI) and they had trucks with the AFI logos as well as uniforms of that police officer, he told the jury.
Journalist Ronny Rojas contributed to this report from the hearing in New York.