Genaro García Luna was kidnapped by members of the Beltrán Leyva Cartel without his escorts offering any resistance.
This was revealed this Tuesday by Sergio Villarreal Barragán
El Grande
, drug trafficker and first witness in the trial against the former Secretary of Security in New York.
The former policeman also assured that García Luna was "raised" by Arturo Beltrán Leyva, an old ally who declared war on the Sinaloa Cartel in early 2008 and who unleashed chaos in Mexico during the first stretch of the Presidency of Felipe Calderón (2006). -2012).
"For Arturo, nothing was impossible," said El Grande.
"In Mexico, everything is possible, there is a lot of corruption," he concluded in his testimony before the Brooklyn court.
Villarreal Barragán explained in great detail how the break within the Sinaloa Cartel and the drug war between the faction of Joaquín
El Chapo
Guzmán and Ismael
El Mayo
Zambada and that of the Beltrán Leyva brothers occurred.
The drug lord implied that one of the determining factors was El Chapo convincing law enforcement to go after his old allies.
"People from the government began to fall on us," said El Grande.
Arturo Beltrán, the leader of the Beltrán Leyva, realized that capture operations and seizures almost always occurred after he had spoken with El Mayo or El Chapo, at least that's what he inferred.
"He realized the betrayal," said his former lieutenant.
The straw that broke the camel's back was the arrest of Alfredo Beltrán, alias
Mochomo
and Arturo's brother, in an Army operation in January 2008. Always according to the testimony of Villarreal Barragán, the Beltrán Leyva faction could not believe that the payment millions of dollars in bribes offered him no protection.
El Grande said on Monday that Arturo Beltrán was personally in charge of delivering monthly bribes of more than one million dollars to García Luna, since he took over as director of the Federal Investigation Agency (AFI) during the Government of Vicente Fox (2000-2006). ).
The bribes were delivered in black suitcases and bags to a safe house south of Mexico City.
When the defendant became head of the Public Security Secretariat (SSP), a newly created ministry during the Calderón Administration, there was a change in the bribery scheme, the witness said.
García Luna, also in charge of the Federal Police at that time, no longer met personally with the members of the cartel, but almost always sent his right-hand man, Luis Cárdenas Palomino, then deputy director of Private Security of the SSP.
According to this version, the former head of the AFI sometimes supervised the receipt of money by means of radios and remote calls.
"What side are you on?
With my cousin El Chapo or with me," Arturo Beltrán asked García Luna, according to the story.
"The problem is yours, I am neutral," the former official allegedly replied.
In the witness's opinion, the Secretary of Security was most likely collaborating with both factions at the same time.
"He kept working for everyone: El Mayo and El Chapo, but also for Arturo," said El Grande.
“There were members of the Federal Police who left with him and others with Arturo,” he added.
"It was a very violent war, we all started killing each other."
It was after the capture of Mochomo that Arturo Beltrán had García Luna kidnapped, although no specific date was given.
“They had picked it
up
in the State of Morelos, on the way to Cocoyoc [a small town an hour and a half from the capital],” said El Grande.
The
drug traffickers
took the Cabinet member to speak with his boss in "an office" of the Beltrán Leyva family.
"They talked and then they let him go, they took him to where they had picked him up," said Villarreal Barragán.
The witness recalled that drug traffickers like Édgar Valdez Villarreal
La Barbie or
Alberto Pineda
El Borrado
laughed after the official's visit to the safe house in Morelos and talked in a corner of the house, where there were a lot of chargers lying around.
They were the cartridges of the secretary's escorts, who could not do anything to prevent it.
In 2010, the writer Ricardo Ravelo released a similar story about an alleged kidnapping of García Luna at the hands of Beltrán, but he pointed out that it was when he was in charge of the AFI.
"Do you see how easy it is to get to you?" is one of the phrases that Ravelo attributed to the leader of the Beltrán Leyva cartel.
El Grande reported murders, kidnappings and betrayals between old partners who later became enemies.
Beltrán was so upset by the capture of his brother that he planned to take revenge and kill Jesús
El Rey
Zambada, brother of El Mayo.
The law of retaliation: one brother for another.
“Arturo's first plan was to kill him,” Villarreal Barragán commented, “I told him no, they were going to kill Alfredo [
Mochomo
Beltrán] in jail.”
César de Castro, lawyer for Genaro García Luna, at the opening hearing, on January 23. JANE ROSENBERG (REUTERS)
Plan B was to get him arrested.
"Then he ordered that he be detained by the government," said El Grande.
The Beltrán Leyva infiltrated with the people of El Mayo to find El Rey, the person in charge of all the shipments of the El Chapo cartel that passed through the Mexico City airport.
"There were two attempts, in the first we gave the information to the Army, but they sold it to the people of El Rey," said Villarreal Barragán, in another testimony about the alleged corruption that prevails in the forces of order.
The second was with Siedo, the Office of the Special Prosecutor for Organized Crime Investigation.
That institution, which depended on the then Federal Attorney of the Republic, was in charge of leading the capture operation against
El Rey
Zambada.
The criminals had also infiltrated there.
El Grande put on the uniform of an official State agent again and other gunmen disguised themselves as Siedo agents.
"I was part of the operation," acknowledged Villarreal Barragán.
“There were some that we dressed up.”
The arrest was consummated in October 2008 in the midst of a fierce shooting in Mexico City, with the support of the local police in the Mexican capital.
“I ordered the Siedo people to take photos of Rey and all the detainees,” said El Grande.
He was afraid that the contacts of El Mayo and El Chapo would exchange him for someone else and release him.
It was at that point that the witness stressed: "In Mexico, everything is possible."
El Grande said he had seen everything regarding the complicity of law enforcement with organized crime.
He referred, for example, to the wedding of La Barbie in Acapulco.
The Beltrán Leyva Cartel, at the time when they were still allies of Sinaloa, obtained information from the authorities themselves that the ceremony was infiltrated by agents and that they planned to raid several drug lords.
In the end, the drug traffickers laughed at the government.
No one showed up to the wedding.
“The party was held, but we did not go.
Not even the".
El Grande also spoke of his arrest on September 12, 2010, a Sunday afternoon in Puebla, in the center of the country.
"I was at home with my wife and my son," he said.
Suddenly, a group of the Navy broke down his door and pointed it at him.
"I gave them my weapons, I told them that they were looking for me and I told them to leave my family alone," said the drug trafficker almost at the end of the interrogation of assistant prosecutor Erin Reid.
"They stole everything they could and they arrested me," she said.
After his capture, he asked to speak with a DEA agent.
Instead, they took him to Marisela Morales, then head of Siedo.
He did not feel confident in collaborating with the Mexican authorities.
Villarreal Barragán was extradited in May 2012, six months before Calderón's term ended, who maintains that he did not know of any links between members of his government and organized crime.
Arturo Beltrán Leyva was killed in December 2009 in a Navy operation.
García Luna's lawyers had their turn to question the witness.
The defense has focused on questioning the credibility of the collaborating witnesses and ensuring that it is a political revenge against his client.
The former secretary faces five charges: three for drug trafficking, one for organized crime and another for false statements.
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