A Florida court on Thursday ordered a former Mexican security chief convicted of drug trafficking and his wife to pay more than $2.4 billion to their country, Mexico’s government said.
Mexico sued Genaro Garcia Luna, who is imprisoned in the United States, for alleged corruption and money laundering involving dozens of public contracts.
The ruling is the latest twist in the saga of the former high-flying minister who earned himself the nickname of “supercop” but instead aided and abetted drug traffickers.
The money awarded by a Florida court is three times the amount that the Mexican government had originally sought, a government statement said.
It said Garcia Luna was ordered to pay nearly $749 million and his wife Linda Cristina Pereyra is to pay a staggering $1.74 billion.
“The judgment is consistent with seven guilty verdicts previously issued and enforced against Garcia Luna, his wife, and his five companies as a result of their failure to appear at trial,” the statement added.
It said that nearly $3 million had already been recovered from assets, including a company owned by the couple, as well as real estate.
Garcia Luna, 56, was convicted by a U.S. court in 2023 of taking millions of dollars in bribes to allow the Sinaloa Cartel to smuggle tons of cocaine.
According to the U.S. Justice Department, former cartel members testified that bribe money was handed off to Garcia Luna in a variety of locations, including at a “safe house” where cash was hidden in a false wall, at a car wash and at a French restaurant across the street from the U.S. Embassy.
Garcia Lina was paid in U.S. cash, “stuffed variously in suitcases, briefcases and duffel bags,” prosecutors said.
A New York judge sentenced him to more than 38 years in prison and a $2 million fine.
During former Sinaloa kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman’s trial in the same court in 2018, a former cartel member testified that he personally delivered at least $6 million in payoffs to García Luna, and that cartel members agreed to pool up to $50 million to pay for his protection. “El Chapo” is serving a life sentence in a maximum security prison in Colorado after being convicted in 2019 on charges including drug trafficking, money laundering and weapons-related offenses.
Garcia Luna, who held high-ranking security positions in his country from 2001 until 2012, was the highest-ranking Mexican government figure ever to face trial in the United States.
He served as chief of the Mexican equivalent of the FBI from 2001 until 2006, when he was elevated to secretary of public security, essentially running the federal police force and most counter-drug operations.
Garcia Luna is considered an architect of the U.S.-backed war on drugs launched in 2006 by Mexico’s then president Felipe Calderon.
In 2012, after retiring from public service, he moved to the United States and used his extensive contacts to win lucrative contracts with the Mexican government.
He was arrested in December 2019 in Dallas, Texas.
The Mexican government accused a business conglomerate belonging to Garcia Luna’s family of obtaining 30 public contracts and obtaining funds totaling more than $745 million.
Mexico’s Financial Intelligence Unit alleged that the money was transferred abroad through the use of tax havens and the acquisition of property and other assets in Florida.
Garcia Luna was sentenced less than three months after the dramatic arrest on U.S. soil of Sinaloa Cartel co-founder Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, who claimed he had been kidnapped in Mexico and delivered into U.S. custody against his will. Zambada was detained along with Joaquin Guzman Lopez, a son of El Chapo.