US federal prosecutors mentioned the previous official was the Sinaloa cartel’s “most precious asset”
Mexico’s former head of public safety, Genaro García Luna, has been accused of taking bribes from a significant cartel and permitting the legal group to smuggle huge portions of narcotics into the US. Now dealing with fees in a US federal courtroom, the allegations in opposition to Luna have been first raised throughout the trial of infamous drug lord Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman.
The ex-official’s trial acquired underway on Monday in a Brooklyn courtroom, the place Luna was accused of taking part in a key function within the Sinaloa cartel’s smuggling operations whereas working as safety chief between 2006 and 2012.
“The proof will present that the defendant, the one that was imagined to be in control of combating the Sinaloa cartel, was really its most precious asset,” the prosecution mentioned in its opening assertion, including “The defendant took hundreds of thousands of {dollars} of bribes once more, time and again,” and “betrayed his nation and ours.”
A protection legal professional for Luna, Cesar de Castro, attacked the federal government’s case in his personal opening assertion, arguing there’s “no cash, no images, no video, no texts, no emails, no recordings, no paperwork – no credible, plausible proof that Genaro García Luna helped the cartel.”
“Don’t let the cartels play you,” he instructed the jury, including that cartel members set to testify within the case have been solely doing so to scale back their very own sentences and take revenge in opposition to a Mexican official previously concerned in combating legal teams.
Luna was arrested in late 2019 after a witness within the trial of Sinaloa boss ‘El Chapo’ revealed that the official had accepted hundreds of thousands of {dollars} to look the opposite method because the cartel trafficked medication by means of Mexico. In response to ProPublica, US investigators uncovered proof of his function in drug smuggling years earlier, together with whereas Luna was nonetheless in workplace in 2012, however federal prosecutors repeatedly denied requests to cost him. Whereas he was in the end indicted on 5 counts linked to trafficking and corruption – every carrying sentences starting from 10 years to life in jail – the rationale for the years-long delay stays unclear.
The trial kicked off weeks after Mexican authorities arrested Ovidio ‘El Raton’ Guzman-Lopez, the son of El Chapo, prompting violent clashes between cartel members and police that left no less than 30 individuals useless. Although a Mexico Metropolis decide not too long ago barred the person’s extradition to the US, American authorities are nonetheless working to have him launched into their custody. The elder Guzman was extradited to the US in 2017 and later convicted on 10 legal courts, for which he acquired a life sentence.
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