News Americas, NEW YORK, NY, WEDS. Dec. 11, 2019: The US on Tuesday charged a former Mexican security minister with taking bribes from a drugs cartel. Here are five things you should know about him.
1: He is Genaro García Luna, 52, who was arrested in Texas on Tuesday. He served as public security chief in the administration of President Felipe Calderon between 2006 and 2012. In the 2018 trial of Joaquín Guzmán Loera, the drug kingpin known as El Chapo, El Chapo’s partner Ismael Zambada García’s brother, Jesus Zambada García, testified to bribing García Luna with suitcases stuffed with $3 million in cash on two occasions. On December 9, 2019, García Luna was arrested in Dallas on charges of taking millions in bribes from the Sinaloa cartel.
2: García Luna had been unable to explain his personal wealth, which includes luxury homes and real estate in Mexico City. US prosecutors say García Luna gave the cartel safe passage for drug shipments and access to sensitive information. They say that on two occasions cartel members delivered up to $5m in two briefcases to him in person. He has previously denied any wrongdoing.
3: García Luna was included in a list of the “10 most corrupt Mexicans” published by Forbes in 2013. He broke a self-imposed silence in a letter to Steve Forbes that his inclusion in the list was based on lies and that it lacked journalistic integrity. He was involved in working with El Chapo, who was the World’s Most Wanted Man. He reportedly helped El Chapo for his presidential hopes.
4: García Luna’s training includes specialization from security and intelligence agencies in the United States, Spain, Israel, France, Colombia and Japan. In 1989, García Luna started his career in intelligence at the Centro de Investigación y Seguridad Nacional (Center for National Security and Investigation, CISEN), where he was responsible of Counterintelligence and Terrorism.
In 1998, he became the Coordinator General for Intelligence of the Preventive Federal Police, where he designed the conceptual framework for intelligence areas and their executive integration.
In 2000, after winning the position in an open contest, he was named Director for Planning and Operation for the Federal Judicial Police, where he began a re-engineering process for the agency. It included new administrative structures, operational concepts, and incorporating cutting-edge information systems.
In 2001 was designated founder and Director General of the Agencia Federal de Investigación (Federal Investigation Agency.
5: García Luna completed his master’s degree in Business (MBA) from the University of Miami on May 2015 and holds a B.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering from the Autonomous Metropolitan University (UAM) and a Diploma Course in Strategic Planning at the Accountancy and Administration Faculty of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). He is the author of ‘Contra el crimen: ¿Por qué 1,661 corporaciones de policía no bastan? Pasado, Presente y Futuro de la Policía en México,’ (2006) [Against Crime: Why 1,661 police forces are not enough. Past, Present and Future of Police in Mexico], where he first laid out the basic concepts of the New Police Model for Mexico, placing the emphasis on the importance of intelligence tasks, and “El Nuevo Modelo de Seguridad para México” (2011), which indicates what are the considerations and the state vision to confront a national priority.
