Guarding the Hen House

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A US court convicted a former high-ranking Mexican official, who oversaw Mexico’s efforts to fight drug trafficking, of taking millions in bribes and aiding the powerful Sinaloa drug cartel, the Washington Post reported.

A jury found top law enforcement official Genaro García Luna guilty of numerous charges Tuesday, including involvement in an ongoing criminal enterprise and international cocaine distribution.

García Luna ran Mexico’s Federal Investigation Agency from 2001 to 2005 and was the country’s secretary of public security from 2006 to 2012. He also served as a point of contact for US officials working to combat drug trafficking in Mexico.

US authorities charged him in 2019 with acting as an enabler for the cartel. The prosecution has accused García Luna of taking millions of dollars “from the very people he was supposed to prosecute,” while helping arrest and sometimes kill members of rival cartels.

García Luna faces life in prison. Sentencing is scheduled for June 27.

The conviction comes at a time when organized criminal factions are competing for power over a large swathe of Mexican territory. According to Mexico’s crime statistics, homicides have hovered above 30,000 a year since 2019, just after Andrés Manuel López Obrador became president.

Observers noted that the case also underscores failures in the US counter-narcotics strategy in Mexico, which has prompted López Obrador to suggest that US intelligence agencies “need a shake-up, a review.”

Even so, García Luna’s conviction follows the controversial US case against former Mexican Defense Minister Salvador Cienfuegos. In 2020, US authorities arrested him in Los Angeles on bribery and drug trafficking charges but later released him following pressure from the Mexican president.