Mexican authorities said Thursday that former top security official Genaro Garcia Luna embezzled up to $745.9 million from government technology contracts.
Pablo Gomez, head of Mexico’s anti-money laundering unit, said Garcia Luna and his associates created companies that won 30 dubious government contracts while he was Mexico’s top security official between 2006 and 2012 and for six years afterward. .
García Luna “set up a network of corruption and money laundering for his own benefit and that of his relatives,” said Gómez.
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Gomez outlined some of the properties the Mexican government is seeking to recover in a lawsuit filed in Florida against Garcia Luna and his alleged partners, whom he called a “family business conglomerate.” García Luna moved to Florida after leaving his position in Mexico.
Former top Mexican security official Genaro Garcia Luna is accused of embezzling up to $746 million from contracts. (AP Photo/Alexandre Meneghini, file)
García Luna is currently on trial in New York, accused of accepting millions of dollars to allow the Sinaloa cartel to traffic tons of cocaine to the United States. The lawsuit is independent of the criminal trial.
Garcia Luna allegedly funneled money from government intelligence technology and prison security contracts into offshore accounts, many in Barbados, and then sent it to Miami to buy luxury condos and vintage cars.
Gomez suggested that Garcia Luna and his associates had a penchant for vintage Mustangs from the 1960s and ’70s, saying they had purchased several of them. He said they also bought luxury sports cars like Lamborghinis and Ferraris.
Gomez said the Florida lawsuit was filed in September 2021.
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The contracts were for things like surveillance, monitoring and communications equipment used in prisons and in intelligence work. Allegedly, the contracts were inflated. In one case, Gomez said, the contract was simply forged.
In New York, Garcia Luna is on trial accused of accepting briefcases full of cash, millions of dollars, in all, to allow the notorious Sinaloa cartel to operate with impunity while shipping cocaine to the US. The evidence is based in verbal testimonies of imprisoned former drug traffickers.
García Luna served as President Felipe Calderón’s secretary of public safety from 2006 to 2012. His lawyers say he was a legitimate businessman advising in Florida before he was arrested in 2019.
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Mexico’s current president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has long complained that when corrupt politicians and drug traffickers are convicted in the United States, the United States confiscates and keeps their fortunes, which were often largely made in Mexico. López Obrador wants Mexico to get that money back.
