The prosecutor of the New York court instructing the case of former Mexican Security Secretary Genaro García Luna accuses him of threatening and harassing journalists and media outlets investigating his crimes, according to a court document to which AFP had access on Thursday.
According to the document, the US prosecutor’s office seeks to “present evidence that, between approximately 2008 and 2013, the defendant subjected a journalist to a campaign of harassment and threats as a result of the investigations he was conducting,” although it does not identify the alleged victim.
Also, between 2009 and 2010, the defendant “bribed” a media outlet to make “journalists not publish negative news about him.”
“The evidence of the defendant’s efforts to silence journalists helps explain how he was able to corruptly aid the Sinaloa cartel for years without being detected or apprehended,” says the preliminary motion filed by the Brooklyn court prosecutor Breon Peace.
García Luna will initially sit on the bench on October 24 to answer charges of conspiring to traffic cocaine, which helped the Sinaloa Cartel to send tons of drugs to the United States in exchange for millionaire bribes between 2001 and 2012, and another crime for making false statements in 2018, when he applied for his American nationality.
If that date were not possible, the defendant would sit on the bench at the beginning of next year, as decided by the judge instructing the case. brian cogan in a hearing held on October 27.
According to US justice, the collaboration of this 53-year-old engineer would have allowed the Sinaloa Cartel to introduce at least 53 tons of cocaine into the United States.
In January 2020, García Luna, who is facing life imprisonment, pleaded not guilty to the three charges brought against him by the US justice system.
Arrested on December 10, 2019 in Dallas, Texas, García Luna, who in 2018 applied for US nationality, is also accused in Mexico of diverting more than 200 million dollars from the public treasury to his family’s companies.
From 2001 to 2005, García Luna directed the defunct Federal Investigation Agency of Mexico, in charge of fighting corruption and organized crime, and from 2006 to 2012 he was Secretary of Public Security of the government of Felipe Calderonwith control over the federal police.
García Luna is one of the highest-ranking Mexican officials detained in the United States accused of drug trafficking.