Genaro García Luna paid
El Universal
a monthly payment of 25 million pesos to obtain favorable coverage for his tenure as Secretary of Public Security.
This was stated on Monday by Héctor Javier Villarreal, Coahuila's Finance Secretary in the Government of Humberto Moreira (2005-2011), in the trial against the former official in New York.
Villarreal explained that Moreira served as an intermediary between the accused and Juan Francisco Ealy Ortiz, the owner of the newspaper, one of the largest circulation in the country.
"The agreement was 25 million pesos per month to support it," said the witness.
Villarreal, who was State Secretary of Finance from 2008 to 2010, said that when he was in office he was in a meeting with Moreira and García Luna, although he did not specify when it was.
"García Luna told Governor Moreira that he needed his support, that he knew someone at
El Universal
," said the witness.
"Humberto Moreira told him that he was a good friend of the owner of the newspaper, that if he needed anything, he would let him know," he added.
Villarreal is the first former Mexican official to testify at the trial.
García Luna faces three charges for cocaine trafficking, another for organized crime and one more for making false statements.
Since the previous hearings, the Prosecutor's Office had accused him of giving bribes to favorable media and threatening journalists who criticized him.
Always according to his testimony, García Luna was concerned because the rumor was circulating in the media that he had been kidnapped by members of a cartel, an episode that received attention during the trial and that supposedly happened at the hands of Arturo Beltrán Leyva's people.
"García Luna asked him if there was any way he could bring him closer [to Ealy Ortiz], to tell him that none of this was real," Villarreal narrated.
"Without any problem," recalled the declarant about the words of his boss.
“What was the relationship between Mr. Ealy Ortiz and Mr. Moreira?” Assistant District Attorney Erin Reid asked him.
“She was his compadre,” she answered.
With the supposed mediation of Moreira, García Luna and the people from the newspaper agreed to give favorable coverage, highlighting the achievements of the Ministry of Public Security and cleaning up the image of its headline, said the witness.
The person in charge of making the payments was Sergio Montaño, a senior officer and a man close to the then secretary, according to testimony.
“We went directly to
El Universal
to close the deal,” Villarreal said.
In that first meeting, cash was delivered to make the pact, the former official commented.
“[Montaño] had a small suitcase with the cash and he said that the rest was in the truck in which we traveled,” he recounted.
Villarreal said that Montaño once asked him to make the payment to the newspaper with money from the Government of Coahuila.
The witness raised the bill with his right hand in the Brooklyn court and read the most relevant details of the payment order, with
El Universal
as the beneficiary.
The invoice was issued on June 24, 2009, under the concept "Advertising campaign to rescue tourism" and did not have a page.
The amount was 11.5 million pesos, 10 million pesos as an alleged irregular payment plus one and a half million pesos for taxes.
"I imagine it was a favor, to pay what they needed [that month]," explained the witness.
The money came from the Ministry of Finance, he commented.
Villarreal said that the normal procedure for accounts payable from the Government of Coahuila was to issue an invoice with folio, then scan it, file it and upload it to a payment system.
But he admitted that when deviations or overpayments were made, that information was not uploaded to the system.
"Prepare without folio, thank you", read a
post it
, a note attached to the invoice that he showed in the room.
The testimony is one of the few times that one of the participants in the scheme investigated by US authorities has described him in public.
"I kept all the payments that were not consistent in a box," the witness acknowledged.
“Everything I thought could hurt the governor,” he added.
The former treasurer turned himself in in February 2014 in Texas, one day after being released on bail by Mexican authorities.
He was in the custody of US authorities for eight months, he said.
"When I came here to the United States, I brought all those invoices and a server," the deponent recounted.
Although the name of García Luna does not appear on the payment order, the invoice issued by the Government of Coahuila is one of the most important documentary evidence that the Prosecutor's Office has managed to present in the judicial process.
Villarreal commented that the relationship between Moreira and García Luna was close.
He recounted, for example, that he participated in a tour with his boss and the former secretary at an intelligence center of the Ministry of Public Security in Mexico City.
The defendant showed them how the Pegasus spyware worked and offered it to the Coahuila government, the witness said.
The purchase, however, did not materialize.
The state authorities were afraid of being spied on by their federal counterparts, the witness justified.
The witness also recounted that there was a time in 2010 when he accompanied Governor Moreira to García Luna's house in Morelos.
“It was a hacienda-type house, a very large house,” Villarreal recalled.
"García Luna was going to give
[Moreira] a helicopter
ride and I was going to talk to him," he said of that meeting.
In some of the meetings the issue of payments to the media was touched upon, the witness commented.
"He told Professor Humberto that everything was going well, that everything was working correctly," he assured.
Villarreal said that the Moreira government acquired several media outlets and paid bribes to journalists to receive favorable coverage, although he did not say which ones.
"In addition to serving to have a better image," explained the former official, "it was also a way to support or harm someone, make them look better or damage their image."
In March 2011, two months after stepping down as governor, Moreira became the national leader of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).
Its finance secretary, who has already pleaded guilty and is on probation awaiting sentencing, described a corrupt scheme that inflated the Coahuila government's public works payments and then charged builders a commission. illegal.
He said that he had earned 2.5 million dollars thanks to that scheme and that Governor Moreira, about 40 million dollars.
Moreira has maintained his innocence ever since and has accused him of being the victim of a "smear campaign."
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