Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has dismissed allegations from his nation’s disgraced ex-security chief — jailed in the US and dealing with a potential life sentence for corruption — that he has hyperlinks to drug cartels.
“It’s quite simple,” López Obrador informed reporters Wednesday at his common morning information convention. “Present the proof.”
The president denied prices that surfaced in a handwritten letter from Genaro García Luna despatched Tuesday by his lawyer to a handful of reports shops, together with The Instances. A former public safety minister, convicted final 12 months of taking tens of millions in bribes from leaders of the Sinaloa cartel, García Luna alleged that the present Mexican chief has connections with organized crime.
García Luna, 56, is among the many highest-ranking former Mexican officers ever convicted of corruption in a U.S. court docket. He offered no proof to assist his allegations however stated “it’s public information” that López Obrador has ties to “the leaders of drug trafficking and their households.”
García Luna’s lawyer, César de Castro, who additionally offered an English translation of the textual content, stated his shopper requested to launch the assertion “given current occasions in Mexico and right here in the US.”
García Luna is scheduled to be sentenced on Oct. 9 in U.S. District Courtroom in Brooklyn, N.Y., earlier than the decide who sentenced Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán to life in jail in 2019. García Luna, who witnesses testified took bribes to favor El Chapo’s cartel whereas overseeing federal regulation enforcement operations underneath then-President Felipe Calderón, may face an analogous destiny.
López Obrador, 70, whose six-year time period ends Oct. 1, has repeatedly rejected studies of getting acquired marketing campaign funds from drug traffickers.
“In my a long time as a pacesetter I’ve endured many accusations,” the president stated, noting that none had ever been proved.
He challenged García Luna to current proof of corruption, alleging that the previous safety chief labored for earlier governments that “spied” on him as a longtime chief of the political opposition.
“He writes that there are proofs, there are movies, calls, audios,” the president stated, citing allegations within the ex-official’s letter. “It’s quite simple, that he make them recognized. He has all of it.”
The president has accused Calderón of committing election fraud to narrowly defeat him within the 2006 presidential race and of subsequently presiding over a “narco-state,” with García Luna as his corrupt high regulation enforcement wingman.
Calderón has repeatedly denied the allegations.
Meantime, President-elect Claudia Sheinbaum, who takes workplace Oct. 1, accused the ex-security chief of partaking in a “political” act designed to “smear” the status of her longtime political patron.
“Completely false,” Sheinbaum stated of the allegations. “The president has by no means been concerned in something to do with any legal.”
Proof at García Luna’s trial confirmed he labored carefully with U.S. authorities throughout his years in public workplace, which stretched again to the early 2000s, when then-President Vicente Fox put him in command of a newly shaped company that was the Mexican equal of the FBI. He later rose to a Cupboard place underneath Calderón, and images launched in connection along with his trial confirmed him assembly with outstanding U.S. officers, together with then-President Obama.
A number of former high-ranking cartel members, cooperating in trade for decreased sentences in their very own circumstances, testified that García Luna and different high officers in Mexico’s federal police had been within the pocket of drug kingpins. García Luna maintained in his letter that investigators had not discovered “a single peso-dollar” value of payoffs in his financial institution accounts.
The trial witnesses included a brother of Sinaloa cartel co-founder Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, who was requested on cross-examination whether or not he was conscious of any bribes paid to López Obrador.
Jesús “El Rey” Zambada denied making any funds on to the present president, however stated underneath additional questioning that he had given money to a lawyer to assist fund López Obrador’s 2006 marketing campaign.
“I do keep in mind paying [the lawyer] some cash, that in line with him, was for the marketing campaign, however not [for] paying López Obrador,” Zambada testified.
El Mayo Zambada, 76, was arrested by U.S. brokers in late July together with a 38-year-old son of El Chapo. Zambada has claimed he was lured to what he thought was a gathering with political leaders within the state of Sinaloa solely to be “forcibly kidnapped” by Joaquín Guzmán López and flown to a small airport close to El Paso.
After leaving workplace, García Luna moved to the US and was operating a Miami-based personal safety agency when he was arrested in December 2019. He claimed that federal prosecutors in New York initially provided a deal that will have allowed him to stroll free after six months and obtain “monetary advantages” in trade for his cooperation in different investigations, a deal he refused to take.
A spokesperson for the U.S. lawyer’s workplace in Brooklyn, which dealt with his prosecution, declined to remark.
McDonnell reported from Mexico Metropolis, Hamilton from San Francisco. Particular correspondent Cecilia Sánchez Vidal in Mexico Metropolis contributed to this report.