Edgar Veytia is questioned by Florian Miede during the trial of the former Secretary of Public Security of Mexico, Genaro García Luna. JANE ROSENBERG (REUTERS)
Edgar Veytia set fire to the Mexican political scene on Tuesday with his statements.
The former Nayarit prosecutor, known as El Diablo, and convicted in the United States for drug trafficking, launched himself against various political figures at the trial hearing against Genaro García Luna in New York.
The former state attorney splashed, in addition to the former Secretary of Security, former President Felipe Calderón (2006-2012) and former governors Ney González (2005-2011) and Roberto Sandoval (2011-2017), on whom he said they had given the order to protect drug traffickers like Joaquín
El Chapo
Guzman.
Veytia has one of the darkest pasts anyone in his entity has ever had.
In addition to having left a thousand people missing in his wake, he was the prosecutor who rubbed shoulders with the big drug cartels and conspired to traffic heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine and marijuana from Mexico to the United States.
The trajectory raises doubts about the weight of his statements after having become a witness for the US Attorney's Office.
When the FBI arrested him at the border crossing between Tijuana and San Diego in March 2017, no one wanted to come out to defend him.
While Veytia was in charge of the prosecution of justice in Nayarit, it was an open secret that was directly linked to organized crime.
Not even his political godfather, Governor Sandoval, came out to defend him then.
Rather, he said that he was "totally disgusted by his split personality" about him.
Veytia suffers from the evil that other witnesses in the case against García Luna have: he enjoys a more than doubtful credibility.
His collaboration with the US authorities even led to the promotion of the investigation in the United States against the former Mexican Secretary of Defense Salvador Cienfuegos.
On that occasion, the former prosecutor had accused the former Army chief of protecting drug cartels in exchange for bribes, according to a journalistic investigation revealed last December.
However, the DEA agents decided to dismiss that statement because he was a character with very little credibility, something that could become a problem in court.
El Diablo was for many years one of Roberto Sandoval's most trusted men, currently detained for operations with resources of illicit origin.
In 2008, when the PRI got the mayoralty of Tepic, the state capital, Veytia became municipal traffic director.
The following year he was promoted to Secretary of Public Safety.
In 2011, he was chosen by the former governor to be part of his state administration.
First as a deputy attorney and, two years later, as a prosecutor, from where he imposed the law of terror.
Despite Veytia's doubtful credibility, he is a character who has traveled in the underworld of organized crime in Mexico and has a lot of information about how and who operated there during the years he was active, between 2008 and 2017. Nayarit is a small state. embedded in the Pacific coast, between Jalisco and Sinaloa.
Due to its location, it was a key square for criminal organizations that were dedicated to drug trafficking.
During his period as prosecutor, the state authorities operated a mechanism of extortion and plunder.
The highest spheres carried out the drug dealing business and associated with one or the other, depending on power and time.
All this was proven during his trial in New York and for which he received 20 years in prison.
Veytia was facing charges for life, but hoping to lower that number, he chose to collaborate with justice.
Among the accusations made by the former prosecutor, he accused Calderón of having sent the order to protect the people of El Chapo and Sandoval of having agreed when he was mayor of Tepic with the Beltrán Leyva cartel in exchange for paying for his campaign, without providing evidence. election for governor.
Back then these two cartels were fighting for power in the small coastal state.
Both Calderón and Sandoval have denied the accusations.
Already with the conviction in his pocket, Veytia recounted in great detail what the agreements between authorities and drug traffickers meant.
"We did not stop them, we gave them information so they could escape and evade justice, we covered up the crimes they committed," he said Tuesday in New York court.
The explosiveness of his statements were not supported by a single piece of evidence in court.
"The agreements with drug traffickers are not in writing," he justified.
The jury will now be in charge of determining the validity of those words that stirred up the Mexican political scene.
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