"El Chapo" helped

USA: Ex-drug minister from Mexico goes to prison

Genaro Garcia Luna(Bild: APA/AP2011)

For years, he was responsible for the fight against Mexico's drug cartels - and accepted millions in bribes. The former Mexican security minister Genaro García Luna has now been sentenced to 38 years in prison in the USA for his collaboration with the cartel of the powerful drug lord Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán.

The responsible judge in New York also imposed a fine of two million US dollars (around 1.8 million euros) on Luna, as announced by the US Department of Justice. He is alleged to have accepted millions in bribes from the Sinaloa cartel.

The 56-year-old former security minister was the highest-ranking official in the government of then President Felipe Calderón in the fight against the drug cartels between 2006 and 2012. He was arrested in the Texan city of Dallas in 2019. After around four weeks of trial, a jury found him guilty in February.

Same judge as in the "El Chapo" trial
The prosecution had accused García Luna of protecting the cartel's drug smuggling operations for more than a decade. The defendant's defense, on the other hand, claimed that Luna had always acted with integrity and was now the victim of revenge by the criminals he had put behind bars in cooperation with the USA. "El Chapo" was sentenced to life imprisonment by the same judge in 2019.