Mexico’s ex-security chief jailed for 38 years in US for taking cartel bribes

Genaro Garcia Luna is the highest-level Mexican government official to be convicted in the US (Alexandre Meneghini/AP)

The man once heralded as the architect of Mexico’s war on drug cartels has been sentenced to more than 38 years in a US prison for taking massive bribes to aid drug traffickers.

Genaro Garcia Luna, Mexico’s former secretary of public security, was convicted by a New York jury in 2023 of taking millions of dollars in bribes to protect the violent Sinaloa cartel that he was supposedly combating.