Genaro García Luna, convicted of drug trafficking and organized crime in the US

Genaro García Luna has been found guilty of all the charges he was facing this Tuesday in New York.

After two days of deliberations and four weeks of statements, the jury's verdict marks the end of the trial for drug trafficking and organized crime against the Secretary of Public Security of the Government of Felipe Calderón (2006-2012).

It has been the highest-profile legal process against a former Mexican official in the United States.

Sentencing is scheduled for June 27.

Arrested in Texas in December 2019, just five months after Joaquín

Guzmán was sentenced to life in prison, García Luna faced three counts of cocaine trafficking, one for organized crime and another for making false statements in court. Brooklyn.

The Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, the same one that precipitated the fall of the most famous Mexican capo in recent times, accused him of collaborating for years with the Sinaloa Cartel in exchange for million-dollar bribes.

Prosecutors affirmed that the former official's ties go back more than two decades, since he took over as director of the Federal Investigation Agency, created in 2001 during the Government of Vicente Fox (2000-2006).

"With the help of the Government, the cartel grew in terms of territory, in the amount of drugs that we moved, and it eliminated its enemies," said Sergio Villarreal Barragán, alias

, the first witness called to testify in the trial.

The same thesis was repeated in the conclusions of the prosecutors.

“It is impossible for the cartel to have expanded as it did without the support of the Mexican government,” Assistant Prosecutor Saritha Komatireddy said last Wednesday.

The testimonies of the trial also splashed the Calderón Administration.

Édgar Veytia, a former Nayarit prosecutor and convicted for links to drug trafficking, said that he instructed himself to protect El

Guzmán over the rest of the drug traffickers.

"The line was El Chapo," Veytia said.

The former president denied that such orders existed during his tenure.

"I never negotiated or agreed with criminals," the former president replied.

The trial against the former member of the Cabinet put in the dock the war against drug trafficking that was launched during the Calderón government and that marked the meteoric rise of García Luna, until then a second-line official.

Feared, ambitious and powerful, the man who put a face on the fight against drugs became one of the most controversial figures in Mexican politics.

By order of the judge and because of how the case was built in the United States, many of the doubts that were raised about the legacy of the former Secretary of Security were left out of court.

The process ended at least two weeks earlier than originally planned and was criticized on the other side of the border for the lack of physical evidence.

"Where is the evidence?" questioned César de Castro, who heads García Luna's defense, in various stages of the process.

Some of the most feared drug traffickers of recent decades testified at the trial, such as Óscar Nava Valencia

, leader of the extinct Milenio Cartel,

or Jesús

Zambada, brother of Ismael

Zambada, founder of the Sinaloa Cartel.

Also speaking were former police officers, former Mexican officials, US law enforcement officers and Anthony Wayne, former US ambassador to Mexico.

The judicial process unleashed a political storm in Mexico, even with threats by the president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, to sue De Castro for insinuating that El Rey had also given him bribes.

In the middle of the hurricane on the other side of the border, Genaro García Luna risked his future in a United States court.

Information in development

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