for The Associated Press
Mexico announced this Sunday that it is acting on a new arrest request against former Secretary of Public Security Genaro García Luna, who has been in the United States since last week on charges of receiving million-dollar bribes to protect the Sinaloa Cartel. The state is in litigation in the US.
The attorney general’s office said in a statement that a request for the arrest of “Gennaro ‘G'” is “being processed,” but did not provide details. A federal agent confirmed to The Associated Press that the action is against García Luna, who was secretary of public security from 2006 to 2012 during the government of then-President Felipe Calderón. If the measure is carried through, it could be added to two other arrest warrants, one for illegal entry into Mexico of weapons and prison tenders.
The prosecutor’s office denied that the action being taken in Mexico is related to the process that is taking place in the United States, where Garcia Luna has been detained since 2019, and said the trial “Does not affect, in any way, Mexican processes.” ,
[“Traicionó el juramento a su país”: la fiscalía detalla cómo Genaro García Luna “ayudó” a los narcos mexicanos]
Mexican authorities continue negotiations with the United States for the extradition of the former security secretary, the prosecutor’s office said.
One of Garcia Luna’s procedures in Mexico relates to the failed US federal operation known as ‘Fast and Furious’, which came to light in late 2010 following the death of border agent Brian Terry.
The “Fast and Furious” operation took place between 2009 and 2011 when United States Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) agents tracked 2,500 illegal arms shipments to Mexico in order to track the activities of drug cartels through weapons. Gave permission. , The agency did not locate most of the weapons, including two found at the scene where Terry was killed in southern Arizona.
[Por estas razones el juicio contra Genaro García Luna genera tantas expectativas en EE.UU. y México]
According to the prosecutor’s office, the weapons that the Mexican authorities allowed to enter illegally at the time “caused a huge number of deaths and caused irreparable damage to justice.”
García Luna is also in process for some contracts that the Calderón government did with private companies to build federal prisons and provide services, which have been questioned by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and other officials, who Holds that the contracts have caused matrimonial injury. To the state
The Mexican prosecutor’s office said Garcia Luna, who was also the director of the now-defunct Federal Investigation Agency from 2000 to 2006, is facing two other investigations. Local media reported that a judge is evaluating a process against the former officer for illegal enrichment.
Mexico’s secretary of foreign relations, Marcelo Ebrard, revealed last week the existence of a lawsuit in a United States court against 39 companies and trusts involving or in which García Luna or his relatives participated.
The Mexican Financial Intelligence Unit, which is in charge of money laundering investigations, filed the lawsuit in Miami on September 21, 2021. The agency calculated that the estimated amount to be claimed for public contracts involving these companies was approximately $700 million.
During the first week of the US trial, Sergio Villarreal Barragán, a former federal police officer who joined the Sinaloa cartel, testified about joint cartel-police operations against rival criminal groups; How García Luna warned of the raid, or that one day he took $14 million in cardboard boxes from a warehouse full of cocaine that police had seized from the Gulf Cartel and given to the Sinaloa group.
