Genaro Garcia Luna spent years rising up the ranks of Mexico's security services, earning himself the nickname of "supercop" and a leading role in the fight against the drug traffickers he instead aided and abetted. The ex-public security minister, who was sentenced to more than 38 years in a US prison on Wednesday, is considered an architect of the US-backed war on drugs launched in 2006 by Mexico's then president Felipe Calderon. At the time, he was already profiting from his influence with drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, the since-convicted founder of the Sinaloa Cartel, the Justice Department said at the time of Garcia Luna's arrest in Texas in 2019.
"From 2001 to 2012, while occupying high-ranking law enforcement positions in the Mexican government, Garcia Luna received millions of dollars in bribes from the Sinaloa Cartel in exchange for providing protection for its drug trafficking activities," it said. The 56-year-old, who maintains his innocence, is the highest-ranking Mexican official to be convicted in the United States. As a child, Garcia Luna dreamed of being a football player.
Instead, before even becoming an adult, he was recruited by the security services as an informant, according to the InSight Crime think tank. Garcia Luna studied mechanical engineering at university before joining the Center for Investigation and National Security (CISEN) in the early 1990s. "Although he was initially tasked with monitoring guerrilla groups, he later shifted his focus.