Genaro Garcia Luna, 51, who served in a Cabinet post overseeing Mexico's federal police, was indicted by a federal grand jury in Brooklyn last week on three counts of cocaine trafficking conspiracy and one count of making false statements for his role in allowing the Sinaloa cartel to operate "with impunity" in Mexico.
He was arrested Monday in Dallas.
U.S. Attorney Richard Donoghue says “today's arrest demonstrates our resolve to bring to justice those who help cartels inflict devastating harm on the United States and Mexico, regardless of the positions they held while committing their crimes.”
Luna led the country’s equivalent of the FBI.
The arrest of Mr. García Luna, on Monday, was a signal event in the history of the drug war in Mexico — something akin to the director of the F.B.I. being taken into custody for receiving bribes from the head of the Gambino crime family. The charges against him, prosecutors said, were a direct result of testimony at Mr. Guzmán’s trial in New York.
At the trial, Jesús Zambada García, the brother of (El Chapo) Mr. Guzmán’s chief partner, Ismael Zambada García, told the jury that he had twice personally given Mr. García Luna briefcases filled with at least $3 million in cash.
Mr. Zambada also testified that a syndicate of Mexican traffickers was putting together a separate package of as much as $50 million in bribes for Mr. García Luna, although those payoffs seem not to have been made...
In court papers, prosecutors said that they had obtained financial records showing that Mr. García Luna had amassed a vast personal fortune that was “inconsistent with a civil servant’s salary in Mexico.”
Garcia Luna served as Mexico's secretary of public security from 2006 to 2012.
Prosecutors say the Sinaloa cartel "obtained safe passage for its drug shipments, sensitive law enforcement information about investigations into the Cartel, and information about rival drug cartels," in exchange for millions of dollars in bribes.