By Bernardo Moreno González
Two weeks after the trial against the former secretary of public safety began, some media still romanticize the super cop. They flirt with the idea that the United States Attorney’s Office has nothing, beyond the statements of confessed criminals who collaborate with the State for being cooperating witnesses. There are still no statements from who were the bosses of the defendant, former presidents Vicente Fox and Calderón Hinojosa. The last thing that Calderón said was during an interview with the far-right Alazraki. Calderon asked how it is possible that they want to make a case against García Luna, when it was Calderón and García Luna who captured and extradited those criminals to the United States. Apparently the trial against García Luna is a great surprise for some.
The first witness for the prosecution was «el Grande», Sergio Villarreal Barragán, right arm of Arturo Beltrán Leyva, one of the bosses of the Sinaloa cartel. «El Grande» chronologically recounts events that go back to the beginning of the millennium. García Luna was in charge of the AFI (Federal Investigation Agency), a corporation that tried to imitate the American FBI. Since then García Luna received bribes for logistical support; he warned the cartel of actions by enemies and operatives from the armed forces. They made a kind of big “vaquita” between various bosses of the Sinaloa cartel. He explained that he was paid up to 1.5 million dollars every month, and Arturo Beltrán was in charge of making the payment, from 2001 to 2004. He says that on one occasion the Federal Police seized two tons of cocaine from a rival cartel. They agreed to exchange the cocaine packages for packages that simulated the drug, and the Sinaloa cartel took one ton of cocaine, and paid for the other to García Luna. They paid him at the price of the drug on the streets of the United States: around 14 million dollars, delivered in 20 dollar bills directly to García Luna and his right-hand man, Cárdenas Palomino. Two vans full of bills, he said.
After Beltrán Leyva’s break with the Sinaloa cartel and the eventual distancing of the former security secretary, García Luna was kidnapped while traveling a highway in the state of Morelos. He was taken along with his entire escort, who moved around twenty cars, to make him understand that it was not convenient for him to go away. This fact was documented at the time by the magazine Proceso in 2008, but never confirmed by the authority. “El Grande» also said that his boss recorded almost every phone or video conversation. While he gave his testimony, the prosecutor, on a blackboard, was putting the photographs of the officials that Sergio Villarreal mentioned. At the top García Luna, and below characters such as: Cárdenas Palomino (prisoner in the Altiplano prison for the Cassez-Vallarta case), Ramón «Pequeño» García (fugitive accused by the United States of receiving bribes from the Sinaloa cartel), Edgar Millán (murdered by Beltrán Leyva hitmen in 2008), among others. The closest collaborators of the former Secretary of Public Security. All of them have been decorated for their fierce and courageous fight against crime organized by former President Calderón.
Tirso Martínez «the soccer player» was the next witness, convicted in the United States for drug trafficking in 2020. In charge of the transfer of cocaine to New York by the Sinaloa cartel, he spoke of the money that he personally delivered to the police between 2001 and 2003. These were payments between 100,000 and 200,000 dollars in exchange for cargo protection. Other witnesses were a former Chicago police officer, two DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) agents and an agent from the United States Customs and Border Protection Office, to speak of three large cocaine seizures in 2003: two in New York and one in Chicago, from the Sinaloa cartel.
The last witness, as of today, is Oscar «El Lobo» Valencia, who claims to have personally delivered 10 million dollars to García Luna in bribes, in addition to having been in meetings with him and other drug lords. At the beginning of the trial, García Luna’s defense showed photographs of the defendant together with US politicians and police agents, to intimate that the super policeman worked together with the US authorities against organized crime and drug trafficking. The defense also wanted to dismiss the statements of the witnesses for being sentenced criminals, who have been given the benefit of the cooperating witness program, in addition to asking for evidence, beyond mere testimony.
According to specialists on the subject, the prosecution is assembling the narrative through its witnesses along two lines: the narco-corruption led by García Luna and the cocaine trafficking that finally arrived in New York; finishing off with strong and sufficient evidence, so that the jury does not have the slightest doubt of his guilt.
In the next few days, other witnesses are expected to appear: «El Rey» and «El Vicentillo» Zambada (brother and son of «Mayo» Zambada, top leader of the Sinaloa cartel), «La Barbie» Sergio Valdez Villarreal (collaborator of the Sinaloa cartel), Edgar Veytia (former Nayarit state prosecutor and collaborator of the Jalisco Nueva Generación Cartel), and others.
