MEXICO CITY (AP) — A Florida courtroom awarded the Mexican authorities a large civil judgment Thursday towards its former safety chief, who’s now serving a prolonged jail sentence in the USA for taking bribes from drug traffickers.
Choose Lisa Walsh ordered Genaro García Luna to pay greater than $748 million and his spouse Linda Cristina Pereyra at hand over greater than $1.7 billion.
García Luna was sentenced to more than 38 years in a U.S. jail final October for taking huge bribes to assist drug traffickers.
Mexico’s former secretary of public safety was convicted by a New York jury in 2023 of accepting hundreds of thousands of {dollars} in bribes to guard the violent Sinaloa cartel that he was supposedly combating. He’s the highest-level Mexican authorities official to be convicted in the USA.
He served as secretary of public safety to then-President Felipe Calderón from 2006 to 2012.
After leaving workplace García Luna moved to Florida. His legal professionals stated he was a professional businessman who did consulting in Florida earlier than he was arrested in 2019.
García Luna and associates arrange corporations that received 30 doubtful authorities contracts whereas he was Mexico’s prime safety official in 2006-2012 and for six years afterward.
The contracts had been for issues like surveillance, monitoring and communications gear utilized in prisons and in intelligence work. The contracts had been presumably inflated. In a single case, the contract was merely falsified.
García Luna allegedly channeled cash from the jail safety and authorities intelligence know-how contracts to offshore accounts, many in Barbados, then despatched it to Miami to purchase fancy condos and classic automobiles.
García Luna and his associates purchased a number of classic Mustangs from the Nineteen Sixties and ’70s. In addition they purchased luxurious sports activities automobiles like Lamborghinis and Ferraris.
The Florida lawsuit was filed in September 2021.
