Mexico ex-drug czar to be sentenced over bribes from cartels

By Luc Cohen

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Genaro Garcia Luna, who for several years led Mexico's fight against the country's violent drug trade, is set to be sentenced on Wednesday over his U.S. criminal conviction for accepting bribes from the cartels he was supposed to fight.

Garcia Luna, 56, will be sentenced by U.S. District Judge Brian Cogan in Brooklyn federal court at a hearing starting at 4:30 p.m. ET (2030 GMT). He faces a mandatory minimum of 20 years in prison.

Prosecutors say Garcia Luna, Mexico's public security minister from 2006 to 2012, should face life in prison after he was convicted in February 2023 for engaging in a criminal drug enterprise taking part in various conspiracies and making false statements.

They said in a Sept. 19 court filing that Garcia Luna took millions of dollars in bribes from the Sinaloa Cartel once led by Joaquin Guzman Loera, better known as El Chapo, and in exchange shielded its members from arrest and protected its shipments of cocaine.

Garcia Luna's lawyer Cesar de Castro urged Cogan to sentence him to no longer than the mandatory minimum, noting he has already spent nearly five years in jail since his 2019 arrest.

"A sentence of 20 years would represent the approximate length of Mr. Garcia Luna's entire career as a public servant to the Mexican government," de Castro wrote

Guzman is serving a life sentence at a Colorado maximum security prison after being convicted in 2019 on drug charges.

(Reporting by Luc Cohen in New York; Editing by Bill Berkrot)