Genaro García Luna

Genaro García Luna (born 10 July 1968) is a Mexican former government official and convicted drug trafficker. From 2006 to 2012, he served as secretary of public security during the administration of Felipe Calderón. He was later found to have used his high-ranking role to favor the Sinaloa Cartel to engage in drug trafficking activities during the Mexican drug war.

In the 2018 trial of the drug lord Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán Loera, his partner Jesús Zambada García testified to bribing García Luna with suitcases stuffed with US$3 million in cash on two occasions. On 9 December 2019, García Luna was arrested in the United States on charges of taking bribes from the Sinaloa Cartel. On 21 February 2023, García Luna was found guilty of all five counts by a federal jury in Brooklyn, New York, making the once-highest-ranking law enforcement official in Mexico now a convicted felon. In October 2024, he was sentenced to 38 years in prison. He is currently imprisoned at ADX Florence with a release date of 19 July 2052.

Early life and education García Luna was born in Mexico City. He holds a B.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering from the Autonomous Metropolitan University (UAM) and a Diploma in Strategic Planning from the Accountancy and Administration Faculty of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). He completed a Master of Business Administration (MBA) from the University of Miami in May 2015.

Career

In 1989, García Luna started his career in intelligence at the National Intelligence Centre (CISEN), where he worked in the Counterintelligence and Terrorism departments under President Carlos Salinas de Gortari. In 1998, he became the Coordinator-General for Intelligence of the Federal Preventive Police, where he helped design the framework for intelligence areas and their executive integration. Genaro Luna was also in charge of announcing the arrests of serial killers Raúl Osiel Marroquín and Juana Barraza in the same week of January 2006.

He has authored several books on policing, including Contra el Crimen (2006), emphasizing intelligence-driven reforms, and El Nuevo Modelo de Seguridad para México (2011), which outlines Mexico's national security policy since the beginning of the Mexican drug war. As Secretary of Public Security from 2006 to 2012, García Luna founded the Federal Police Force in 2009, which operated under his vision.

After leaving government service, García Luna became a consultant and businessman focused on evaluating Mexico and Latin America's social, political, and economic conditions. He became a partner in GLAC, which provides a risk and security assessment index used by the business community to evaluate conditions across Mexico. The GLAC index is published in El Heraldo de México and El Financiero. In 2015, García Luna was nominated to the Board of SecureAlert, Inc., a Utah-based company specializing in offender monitoring, which is controlled by Sapinda Asia, Ltd., and Lars Windhorst, who held a majority stake in the company.

Financial transparency

García Luna has been unable to account for his wealth, which includes luxury homes and real estate in Mexico City. These assets would be beyond the means of a civil servant's salary. In 2013, García Luna was listed among the "10 Most Corrupt Mexicans" by Forbes , to which he responded with a letter to Steve Forbes, accusing the publication of basing his inclusion on falsehoods and lacking journalistic integrity.

Further allegations emerged during the 2018 trial of Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán, when the brother of El Chapo's former partner, Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada, testified that García Luna had been bribed with suitcases containing US$3 million in cash on two occasions. This testimony further fueled accusations of García Luna's ties to organized crime. The New York Times reported that the prosecution intended to introduce of cocaine and 4 kg of heroin confiscated in four raids as evidence against García Luna. They also planned to use financial records and intercepted communications at the trial beginning on 30 July 2020.

U.S. courts denied García Luna's requests for release on bond in March and April 2020. Roberta S. Jacobson, the former U.S. ambassador to Mexico (2016–2018), asserted on 3 May 2020 that the Calderón government knew of Genaro García Luna's ties with the Sinaloa Cartel. Former president Felipe Calderón insisted they did not. He pleaded not guilty to the charges against him on 7 October 2020. On 21 February 2023, a Brooklyn jury found him guilty of all charges. On 16 October 2024, he was sentenced to 38 years imprisonment. He is the highest-ranking Mexican official ever to be convicted in the United States.

On 22 May 2025, a court in Florida ordered García Luna and his wife, Linda Cristina Pereyra, to pay US$2.448 billion in damages to the Mexican government.

Brooklyn Detention Center One of his cellmates at the Brooklyn Detention Center is Sam Bankman-Fried: allegedly, the two "communicate warmly" with each other. Another inmate in the dormitory at the Brooklyn Detention Center is the former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández.